登陆注册
5231500000103

第103章 XLVIII.(3)

They called him the Wild Margrave, in their instinctive revolt from the belief that any man not untamably savage could be guilty of his atrocities; and they called his son the Last Margrave, with a touch of the poetry which perhaps records a regret for their extinction as a state. He did not harry them as his father had done; his mild rule was the effect partly of the indifference and distaste for his country bred, by his long sojourns abroad; but doubtless also it was the effect of a kindly nature. Even in the matter of selling a few thousands of them to fight the battles of a bad cause on the other side of the world, he had the best of motives, and faithfully applied the proceeds to the payment of the state debt and the embellishment of the capital.

His mother was a younger sister of Frederick the Great, and was so constantly at war with her husband that probably she had nothing to do with the marriage which the Wild Margrave forced upon their son. Love certainly had nothing to do with it, and the Last Margrave early escaped from it to the society of Mlle. Clairon, the great French tragedienne, whom he met in Paris, and whom he persuaded to come and make her home with him in Ansbach. She lived there seventeen years, and though always an alien, she bore herself with kindness to all classes, and is still remembered there by the roll of butter which calls itself a Klarungswecke in its imperfect French.

No roll of butter records in faltering accents the name of the brilliant and disdainful English lady who replaced this poor tragic muse in the Margrave's heart, though the lady herself lived to be the last Margravine of Ansbach, where everybody seems to have hated her with a passion which she doubtless knew how to return. She was the daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and the wife of Lord Craven, a sufficiently unfaithful and unworthy nobleman by her account, from whom she was living apart when the Margrave asked her to his capital. There she set herself to oust Mlle.

Clairon with sneers and jests for the theatrical style which the actress could not outlive. Lady Craven said she was sure Clairon's nightcap must be a crown of gilt paper; and when Clairon threatened to kill herself, and the Margrave was alarmed, "You forget," said Lady Craven, "that actresses only stab themselves under their sleeves."

She drove Clairon from Ansbach, and the great tragedienne returned to Paris, where she remained true to her false friend, and from time to time wrote him letters full of magnanimous counsel and generous tenderness.

But she could not have been so good company as Lady Craven, who was a very gifted person, and knew how to compose songs and sing them, and write comedies and play them, and who could keep the Margrave amused in many ways. When his loveless and childless wife died he married the English woman, but he grew more and more weary of his dull little court and his dull little country, and after a while, considering the uncertain tenure sovereigns had of their heads since the French King had lost his, and the fact that he had no heirs to follow him in his principality, he resolved to cede it for a certain sum to Prussia. To this end his new wife's urgence was perhaps not wanting. They went to England, where she outlived him ten years, and wrote her memoirs.

The custodian of the Schloss came at last, and the Marches saw instantly that he was worth waiting for. He was as vainglorious of the palace as any grand-monarching margrave of them all. He could not have been more personally superb in showing their different effigies if they had been his own family portraits, and he would not spare the strangers a single splendor of the twenty vast, handsome, tiresome, Versailles-like rooms he led them through. The rooms were fatiguing physically, but so poignantly interesting that Mrs. March would not have missed, though she perished of her pleasure, one of the things she saw. She had for once a surfeit of highhoting in the pictures, the porcelains, the thrones and canopies, the tapestries, the historical associations with the margraves and their marriages, with the Great Frederick and the Great Napoleon. The Great Napoleon's man Bernadotte made the Schloss his headquarters when he occupied Ansbach after Austerlitz, and here he completed his arrangements for taking her bargain from Prussia and handing it over to Bavaria, with whom it still remains. Twice the Great Frederick had sojourned in the palace; visiting his sister Louise, the wife of the Wild Margrave, and more than once it had welcomed her next neighbor and sister Wilhelmina, the Margravine of Baireuth, whose autobiographic voice, piercingly plaintive and reproachful, seemed to quiver in the air. Here, oddly enough, the spell of the Wild Margrave weakened in the presence of his portrait, which signally failed to justify his fame of furious tyrant.

That seems, indeed, to have been rather the popular and historical conception of him than the impression he made upon his exalted contemporaries. The Margravine of Baireuth at any rate could so far excuse her poor blood-stained brother-in-law as to say: "The Margrave of Ansbach . . . was a young prince who had been very badly educated.

He continually ill-treated my sister; they led the life of cat and dog.

My sister, it is true, was sometimes in fault . . . . Her education had been very bad. . . She was married at fourteen."

同类推荐
  • 藏海诗话

    藏海诗话

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 禅宗决疑集

    禅宗决疑集

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 在家出家

    在家出家

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor

    The Merry Wives of Windsor

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 经籍会通

    经籍会通

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 为你自己学习

    为你自己学习

    本书通过大量富于哲理性、故事性和趣味性的事例予以说明,让广大青少年读者真正认识到读书的目的、读书的重要性及读书和自己未来人生命运的关系等,是一本值得广大青少年朋友认真阅读的课外读物。
  • 虞美人:遗世而独立

    虞美人:遗世而独立

    七岁那年,我随母亲进宫参见窦太后。那时正是春日,花红柳绿宴浮桥,皇宫里的风景,果然是与外面不同的。窦太后很喜欢我,每次进宫都会赏赐我些东西,衣袖一挥,便有宫娥宦官站成两排,手捧托盘鱼贯而出。翠玉华盖,香车宝马,漆盒银盘,总是晃得人睁不开眼睛。七岁的我,却早已习惯这样的繁华。
  • 第一夫人的别样人生

    第一夫人的别样人生

    本书讲述了米歇尔、宋美龄、杰奎琳、艾薇塔等众多杰出的第一夫人的别样人生,解读她们的梦想与独立、优雅与智慧、知性与担当,以启迪广大女性朋友在魅力、性情、心灵、人生等方面提升自己,从而做最好的自己。
  • 现代人智慧全书:智慧识人术

    现代人智慧全书:智慧识人术

    本书内容有:现代人更需要识人;容貌识人;衣着打扮识人;行为动作识人;情态识人;谈笑识人;笔记识人;习惯、癖好识人等。
  • 游戏王之嘴强决斗者

    游戏王之嘴强决斗者

    这篇小说纯粹是个人兴趣之作,会不会弃文看情况
  • 向死而爱

    向死而爱

    这是一位16岁上北大,20几岁考上中国社会科学院研究生,32岁就取得德国博士学位,却在36岁那年经历人生重大挫折的知识女性,写给当下女性的自励书。这本让我们深受感动、基于真实的“非同寻常之书”,彰显了一位独立女性的巨大力量,她用女性柔弱的双肩,担当起生活的重负,一步一步地艰难前行。它想传达给读者的是:就算命运之舟行进在未知、黑暗、波涛汹涌的大海上,我们也要寻找生命的光亮。
  • 非人途

    非人途

    一个名叫牧南的毛头小子,无意中得到了“神胎”,不久之后,他便成为了“非人途”的一员,从此,整个世界观都被彻底颠覆了,原来这个世界上竟然拥有那么多我们不知道的秘密!
  • 法玺印禅师语录

    法玺印禅师语录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 久爱成婚:亿万总裁惹不起

    久爱成婚:亿万总裁惹不起

    一夜之间,她失去云家所有宠爱,父亲将她送给老男人,她逃离却难逃失身。三年后,她华丽转变,与帝都最有权势的男人签订合约,他邪魅地在她耳边开口:“想要我替你报仇,取悦我,直到我满意为止。”她妩媚一笑,“三少,你确定你能hold住?”结婚当天,她抛弃他,和别的男人离开,当她回归之时,他已有未婚妻,他不顾未婚妻的脸面,对她高调宣爱,她沉着脸怒声大喊:“苏凌墨,你给我滚!”他面不改色迈步向她走来,一把搂住她暧昧的说:“咱们一起滚…床!单!”
  • 家欢

    家欢

    守着一家小小包子铺的顾家生活拮据,一个铜钱恨不得掰成两个花。女主重生成为顾家的小孙女儿,遭遇了算计多多的后祖母,从此踏上了一发不可收拾,斗智斗勇的道路……幸而身边有恩爱父母疼惜,有热血哥哥护航,有明理姐弟相伴,小日子照样欢欢喜喜!一句话简介,市井小人物的奋斗史,温馨种田流。已有五本完结作品,坑品有保证,请跳坑~O(∩_∩)O~