On leaving him, I went to pay my daily visit to the Prince de Ligne. I delighted in giving him an account of my previous day’s doings. Although at that happy period my occupations mainly consisted of a life spent away from my own quarters and in consorting with my young friends in the pursuit of pleasure, it was like a lullaby to me to go to him to gather from his lips some of his witty and subtle sallies, and to study in a familiar way a small section of that living panorama. The little house was as full as it could hold, and the amiable host was, as usual, dispensing large doses of wit and wisdom to his visitors. His never-failing spirits and the brightness of his recollections reminded his listeners that though the body might be tottering, he prevented it from collapsing. No one conveyed a more accurate idea of the sparkle and the almost indefinable grace of the French intellectual qualities of former days. Hearing the Prince de Ligne talk, I always fancied I was going back a century in the history of French society. The prince’s visitors were repeating to him some of the rumours with which the amateur politicians of the Graben kept public curiosity alive. After having distributed crowns and allotted states, the quidnuncs and newsmongers had taken it into their heads to try their hand at match-making. According to them, the King of Prussia was reported one day to be betrothed to the Grand-Duchess of Oldenburg, the next to one of the Austrian arch-duchesses. ‘Those gentlemen strangely put our credulity to the test,’ remarked the Comte de Witt. ‘Nothing less will satisfy them than the divorce of Marie-Louise, so that she may be joined in matrimony to his Majesty of Prussia.’ ‘Mirabeau was in the habit of saying that there is no piece of idiocy, however crude, that may not find acceptance on the part of a clever man, provided one gets his valet to repeat it to him every day for a month,’ laughed the prince. ‘I am afraid, though, that the Viennese journalists credit us with a somewhat too robust faith. I am not at all certain how “Robinson” on his island of Elba would appreciate the joke?’ The conversation drifted to the theatrical performances the Empress of Austria was offering at the Imperial Palace.