In all these preliminary steps and points, and even in that alpha and omega of excluding Grand-Duke Franz, and getting a Kaiser of his own, Belleisle succeeded. With painful results to himself and to millions of his fellow-creatures, to readers of this History, among others. And became in consequence the most famous of mankind;and filled the whole world with rumor of Belleisle, in those years.--A man of such intrinsic distinction as Belleisle, whom Friedrich afterwards deliberately called a great Captain, and the only Frenchman with a genius for war; and who, for some time, played in Europe at large a part like that of Warwick the Kingmaker: how has he fallen into such oblivion? Many of my readers never heard of him before; nor, in writing or otherwise, is there symptom that any living memory now harbors him, or has the least approach to an image of him! "For the times are babbly," says Goethe," And then again the times are dumb:--<italic>
Denn geschwatzig sind die Zeiten, Und sie sind auch wieder stumm."<end italic>
Alas, if a man sow only chaff, in never so sublime a manner, with the whole Earth and the long-eared populations looking on, and chorally singing approval, rendering night hideous,--it will avail him nothing. And that, to a lamentable extent, was Belleisle's case. His scheme of action was in most felicitously just accordance with the national sense of France, but by no means so with the Laws of Nature and of Fact; his aim, grandiose, patriotic, what you will, was unluckily false and not true. How could "the times"continue talking of him? They found they had already talked too much. Not to say that the French Revolution has since come; and has blown all that into the air, miles aloft,--where even the solid part of it, which must be recovered one day, much more the gaseous, which we trust is forever irrecoverable, now wanders and whirls;and many things are abolished, for the present, of more value than Belleisle!--For my own share, being, as it were, forced accidentally to look at him again, I find in Belleisle a really notable man; far superior to the vulgar of noted men, in his time or ours. Sad destiny for such a man! But when the general Life-element becomes so unspeakably phantasmal as under Louis XV., it is difficult for any man to be real; to be other than a play-actor, more or less eminent,and artistically dressed. Sad enough, surely, when the truth of your relation to the Universe, and the tragically earnest meaning of your Life, is quite lied out of you, by a world sunk in lies; and you can, with effort, attain to nothing but to be a more or less splendid lie along with it! Your very existence all become a vesture, a hypocrisy, and hearsay; nothing left of you but this sad faculty of sowing chaff in the fashionable manner!
After Friedrich and Voltaire, in both of whom, under the given circumstances, one finds a perennial reality, more or less,--Belleisle is next; none FAILS to escape the mournful common lot by a nearer miss than Belleisle.
Beyond doubt, there are in this man the biggest projects any French head has carried, since Louis XIV. with his sublime periwig first took to striking the stars. How the indolent Louis XV. and the pacific Fleury have been got into this sublimely adventurous mood?
By Belleisle chiefly, men say;--and by King Louis's first Mistresses, blown upon by Belleisle; poor Louis having now, at length, left his poor Queen to her reflections, and taken into that sad line, in which by degrees he carried it so far. There are three of them, it seems;--the first female souls that could ever manage to kindle, into flame or into smoke: in this or any other kind, that poor torpid male soul: those Mailly Sisters, three in number (I am shocked to hear), successive, nay in part simultaneous!
They are proud women, especially the two younger; with ambition in them, with a bravura magnanimity, of the theatrical or operatic kind; of whom Louis is very fond. "To raise France to its place, your Majesty; the top of the Universe, namely!" "Well; if it could be done,--and quite without trouble?" thinks Louis.
Bravura magnanimity, blown upon by Belleisle, prevails among these high Improper Females, and generally in the Younger Circles of the Court; so that poor old Fleury has had no choice but to obey it or retire. And so Belleisle stalks across the OEil-de-Boeuf in that important manner, visibly to Geusau; and is the shining object in Paris, and much the topic there at present.