‘Yes,’ said the prince, ‘Casanova was the most diverting individual I have ever met with. It was he who said that a woman is never older than her lover fancies her to be. His inexhaustible recollections, his imagination, which was as vivid as it had been at twenty, his enthusiasm with regard to myself, won my heart. He often read his memoirs to me. They partake of the nature of those of a knight-errant and of the “Wandering Jew”; unfortunately they’ll never see the light.’[58] His writing-table was littered with verses, the greater part unfinished. ‘You are looking at those sketches,’ he said. ‘It is because I am unable to work like the majority of poets. There are two dictionaries at their disposal, the dictionary of the heart and the rhyming dictionary. When there is no longer anything in the first, or when they can no longer read it, they open the second. When my heart no longer dictates, I leave off writing.’ We spent a little more time in examining several charming portraits of women with whom he had been in love, and a rich collection of letters written by the sovereigns and the most illustrious personages of Europe during half a century. The hour for returning struck, and we left the delightful retreat which, one day, will become historical. But amidst those brilliant reminiscences of the Vienna Congress, my grateful memory could not omit that day wholly passed in familiar conversation with the Prince de Ligne. CHAPTER VII A Court Function--The Empress of Austria--The Troubadours-- Amateur Theatricals--The Empress of Russia--The Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg--Tableaux-Vivants--Queen Hortense’s Songs--The Moustaches of the Comte de Wurbna--Songs in Action--The Orphan of the Prisons--Diplomacy and Dancing-- A Ball and a Supper at Court. The fêtes succeeded each other uninterruptedly; the time not given to pleasure was looked upon as wasted. Every week there was a grand reception and ball at the Court. Taking their cue from highest quarters, the foremost members of Austrian society also had their appointed days for welcoming in their drawing-rooms the numberless strangers whom business or pleasure had brought to Vienna. On Mondays the Princesse de Metternich threw open her house; on Thursdays the Master of the Horse, the Prince de Trauttmansdorff, did the same, and on Saturdays, the beautiful Comtesse Zichy followed suit. As a return for this gracious hospitality, the ambassadors and representatives of the great Powers on their side gave most brilliant entertainments. In virtue of this constant exchange of magnificent functions, the days went by without counting, and everybody appeared to have adopted the maxim--the first necessity of mankind is to be happy.