"I thank you, gentlemen," said the emperor, turning to Baron Gablenz's staff. "I hope the campaign will give you opportunities of performing fresh services to me and to the Fatherland. I beg you to remain, Baron Gablenz."

Colonel von Bourguignon, the aides-de-camp, and Herr von Stielow withdrew.

The emperor seized the dispatch, and said, "I have just received this telegram, on which I desire your opinion. The field-marshal," he continued, his voice trembling a little, "begs me to make peace, as the army is in no condition to fight."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Count Crenneville.

"What do you say, Baron Gablenz?" said the emperor to the general, who had remained silent.

He hesitated a moment before replying, whilst the emperor's eyes seemed to hang upon his lips.

"Your majesty, the field-marshal must have most cogent reasons for his request; usually he fears no danger, and dashing boldness, rather than cautious prudence, is his characteristic."

"Your majesty's brave and brilliant army unfit to fight!" cried Count Crenneville; "how can the field-marshal justify such ideas?"

"He promises to justify them," said the emperor.

Count Crenneville shrugged his shoulders in silence, whilst Baron Gablenz asked, "_Can_ your majesty still make peace?"

"If I place Austria for ever in the second rank in Germany, or rather if I permit her to be thrust out from Germany--yes; if I give Prussia a double revenge for Olmutz--yes! otherwise I cannot."

Count Crenneville looked anxiously at the general, who stood lost in thought. "Your majesty," he said at last, in a quiet, impressive voice, "no one can rate the power of our enemy higher than I. I have been with Prussia in the field, and I know her material and moral power. Both are immense; her arms are excellent, and the needle-gun is a frightful weapon. If we alone were opposed to Prussia, I should go to the war with a heavy heart. I am rea.s.sured by our German Confederation."

"The army of the confederacy," said Count Mensdorff.

"It is not the military contingent alone that I throw into the balance," continued Baron Gablenz, "but the fact that these separate armies will absorb the Prussian troops, and compel the enemy to a complicated campaign. Had I been able to remain in Hanover, this advantage would have been still greater. However, even without that combination Prussia must fight with very divided forces, whilst we shall be able to concentrate our army. This, your majesty, is my comfort; in this rests my hope of success, however severe may be the conflict. This is my opinion as a general. As to the condition of the army and its fitness for a battle, I cannot speak until I have seen it, and know the reasons for the field-marshal's judgment. On the political situation I need not hazard my ideas, neither would your majesty probably care to possess them; this only would I say, if Austria's honour is engaged I would refuse to yield; a lost battle even is less hurtful than to retreat without having drawn the sword."

The general ceased speaking, and for a few moments silence prevailed in the cabinet.

"Gentlemen," said the emperor, "the questions before me are of so difficult a nature, that they require careful investigation and calm reflection. In an hour I will decide; and I will give to you, Count Crenneville, the answer to the field-marshal, and at the same time you, Count Mensdorff, shall receive a reply to the question you have brought before me."

The two gentlemen bowed.

"Shall the motion be made immediately to the Confederation for the mobilization of the armies of the un-Prussianized States, as your majesty has desired?" inquired Count Mensdorff.

"Certainly," cried the emperor, "it is necessary that the German States should own to their colours, and that the armies of the Confederation should be placed in the field. I am of the opinion of Baron Gablenz that on this our safety greatly depends."

With a friendly nod he dismissed the gentlemen; then approaching General von Gablenz he took his hand, and said, "G.o.d be with you! may He bless your sword, and give me fresh cause to be grateful to you."

Gablenz bent over the emperor's hand, and said with emotion, "My blood, my life, belong to you and Austria!"

The emperor remained alone. Several times he hastily paced his cabinet; then he seated himself at his writing-table, and turned over some papers quickly, without looking at their contents.

"What a frightful position!" he exclaimed; "every feeling of my heart urges me to act against this German calamity, which like a wasting sickness, like a gnawing worm, eats into the heart of Austria, and devours her power and her greatness. My hereditary blood urges me to pick up the glove, half scornfully, half threateningly thrown down so long ago by the dangerous, deadly enemy of my race. The voice of the German people calls me--and my minister counsels retreat, my general hesitates at the moment of decision! Can the thought be true which like a black mountain has oppressed my heart in my dark hours? Am I predestined to bring misfortune on my beloved, beautiful Austria, the glorious inheritance of my great ancestors? Will my name be linked in history with the setting of the Hapsburg star, the fall of the empire?"

He gazed into s.p.a.ce with troubled eyes.

"Oh! that thou couldst stand beside me, thou great Spirit, with thy strong n.o.ble heart, with thy clear intellect, and unconquerable will, to guide the rudder of the Austrian empire: thou whose calm proud strength shattered the power of the h.e.l.lish giant who had dismembered the world! oh, that I had a Metternich! What would he counsel, that mighty mind, whom none understood, whom none can understand, because between his inner life and the world the proud words of Horace stand inscribed: 'Odi profanum vulgus et arceo!'"

He suddenly seized his bell. "Let States-Chancellor Klindworth come immediately," he commanded, as the gentleman-in-waiting entered; "seek him in the office of state." The gentleman-in-waiting withdrew.

"He alone," said the emperor, "yet survives from the times of Austria's greatness, when the threads of all European policy were gathered together in our offices of state, when Metternich's ear was in every cabinet, and his hand linked together the acts of every government. He, it is true, was only the tool of the great statesman, not the confidant of his thoughts--he was not Metternich, no, not Metternich, but he laboured with him in working the wonderful machine--and his quick penetrating mind seized the spirit of the whole, at least in some degree. When he speaks to me, I seem to see that old, rich, many-coloured period, and to know, as if by inspiration, what Metternich would do if he still were the friend and adviser of the house of Hapsburg. I have the will, the power to work,--the courage to fight. Why is wisdom so hard?"

The emperor leant his head on his hand, and sat in deep thought. The gentleman-in-waiting opened the door leading to the inner apartments, and announced, "States-Chancellor Klindworth awaits your majesty's commands." The emperor raised his head and made a sign that he should enter at once.

Through the opened door advanced this extraordinary man, who began his remarkable career as a schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of Hildesheim; he then for a short time played a public part as state-chancellor at the court of Duke Charles of Brunswick, and after the tragic fall of that prince became one of the most skilful and zealous of Metternich's agents. He was involved in all the most important political transactions, and had had relations with every sovereign and minister in Europe; yet he so skilfully enveloped himself in obscurity, that only those most initiated in political circles had ever seen him, or spoken to him.

Klindworth was now a man of about seventy years of age, broad shouldered, and strongly built. His head, which was so pressed down between his shoulders that it seemed to lurk there in concealment, was covered with grey hair, fast turning white, and his face was of such extraordinary ugliness, that it attracted and riveted attention more than the highest order of beauty. His small eyes glittered quick and piercing beneath thick grey eyebrows, and with their keen glances, which they never directed straight at any other eyes, seized on everything worthy of remark within their range of sight.

His wide mouth, with its thin bloodless lips, was firmly closed, and quite concealed in the middle by his long thick nose, which spread out to an enormous breadth towards the lower part. He wore a long brown overcoat closely b.u.t.toned, and a white neck-cloth, and his manner was completely that of a worthy old tradesman who had retired from business. No one would have imagined him to be a most dexterous and far-travelled political agent; the art so much practised in his political life, never to appear, but always to remain in the darkest background, he seemed to exercise in his appearance; it would have been impossible better to have represented the image of a modest unimportant person.

He entered, bowed deeply, and approached within two or three steps of the emperor; he then stood still with a most respectful bearing, and without uttering a word. His quick eyes examined the monarch, and were instantly sunk again to the ground.

"I have sent for you, dear Klindworth," said Francis Joseph, with a slight bend of the head, "because I am desirous of hearing your views on my present position. You know how much I like to hear how things mirror themselves in your mind, which has lived through the experiences of a past great time."

"Your imperial majesty is too gracious," returned Herr Klindworth, in a low, but distinct and penetrating voice. "The rich treasures of experience obtained in a long political life are always at the command of my gracious monarch; as my great master Prince Metternich said--'The past is the best corrective and the truest barometer for the present.' The faults of the past are seen with all their results and consequences, and from them we may learn to avoid the blunders into which present events are leading us."

"Quite right," said the emperor, "quite right, only in the past, in _your_ past, few blunders were committed; but what do you consider would be the most dangerous error which could now be made?"

Without hesitation, Klindworth replied, raising his eyes from the ground for a moment, and fixing them on the emperor:--

"Indecision, your majesty!"

The emperor looked at him with embarra.s.sment.

"And you fear this error may be committed?" he asked.

"I fear it _has already been committed_," returned Klindworth, quietly.

"By whom?"

"Wherefore has your majesty chosen me for this high honour?" asked Klindworth, instead of replying to the question. "Your majesty shall hear my plain humble opinion, though its weight be but as a grain of sand in the balance. You have _yourself_ not decided," and he a.s.sumed a more humble and modest manner than before.

The emperor smiled. "You know how to read the thoughts of others; nothing is safe from your key. But granting that I have not decided, this is no fault; the time for decision has only just arrived."

"Does your imperial majesty command me to speak without any reserve?"

asked Klindworth.

"a.s.suredly," said the emperor, adding with some haughtiness of manner, "I certainly did not send for you to indulge in idle conversation."

The states-chancellor clasped his hands over his breast, and tapped the back of his left hand lightly with the fingers of his right. Then he spoke very slowly, and with long pauses, during which he watched the impression made by his words through his half-closed eyelids:

"I cannot, according to my humble views, share your imperial majesty's opinion that the moment for decision has only just come."

The emperor gazed at him with surprise.

"According to your views, when was that moment?" he asked.

"It was," returned Klindworth, "before Prussia and Italy had concluded a treaty; before Italy was armed; and before Prussia had completed her preparations. Your majesty wished to decide the great German quarrel; your majesty wished to set up the imperial throne in Frankfort after Count Rechberg had, somewhat prematurely, roasted the _b[oe]uf historique_."