Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field/Democratic Mark and the Austrian Aristocracy
DEMOCRATIC MARK AND THE AUSTRIAN ARISTOCRACY
Mark Twain was essentially a democrat, and the nobles he met in Berlin and other parts of Germany never cured him of that fine habit. But in Vienna he grew less exclusive and in the end actually liked to mix with high aristocrats. "The Prussian noble," he once explained at the Metropole, "walks and acts as if he had swallowed the stick they used to beat him with when a youngster—I stole the simile somewhere, but never mind—however, the Vienna brand of aristocrat is different. Maybe Austrian nobles are just as stuck-up on account of their ancestry, but they have the good sense not to let their pride be seen. They all treat me cordially, talk agreeably and seem to possess at least a stock of superficial information. The Princess Pauline Metternich, in particular, is a bully old girl. If she were to write her memoirs, the world would gain a book as bright as Mme. de Sévigné's Letters. For one thing I would like to have seen her husband's face when he learned that she made him sign his own death warrant.
"Prince Metternich, as Austrian ambassador in Paris, used to sign any and every paper his secretaries put before him, as he was much too indolent to read them. To cure him of this habit, Pauline one fine day laid a document on his desk, ordering that he, the Prince, be taken out and shot at sunrise. Metternich promptly put his name to it without reading a line. Next morning at five, several male friends of His Highness rang the bell at the Palace and demanded to be taken up to the bedroom. They wore Austrian uniforms and made an awful racket with their swords. Metternich stormed from his bed to see what the row was and then and there the death warrant was read to him. He fainted. Indeed they had a big time snatching him from the brink of the grave, for he was near frightened to death.
"Some jocular wife, eh?" chuckled Mark.