morning after their arrival at Coblentz, and at three o'clock in the
same day had taken their places at the dinner table in the great saloon.
At the long table upwards of two hundred and fifty guests were
assembled, of different nations, and of very different characters. There
was the cunning, intriguing Greek, who served well his imperial master
the Russian. The order of the patron saint of Moscow, and the glittering
stars of other nations which sparkled on his green uniform, told how
well he had laboured for the interest of all other countries except his
own; but his clear, pale complexion, his delicately trimmed mustachio,
his lofty forehead, his arched eyebrow, and his Eastern eye, recalled to
the traveller, in spite of his barbarian trappings, the fine
countenances of the Aegean, and became a form which apparently might
have struggled in Thermopylae. Next to him was the Austrian diplomatist,
the Sosia of all cabinets, in whose gay address and rattling
conversation you could hardly recognise the sophistical defender of
unauthorised invasion, and the subtle inventor of Holy Alliances and
Imperial Leagues. Then came the rich usurer from Frankfort or the
prosperous merchant from Hamburgh, who, with his wife and daughters,
were seeking some recreation from his flourishing counting-house in the
sylvan gaieties of a German bathing-place. Flirting with these was an
adventurous dancing-master from Paris, whose profession at present was
kept in the background, and whose well-curled black hair, diamond pin,
and frogged coat hinted at the magnifico incog, and also enabled him, if
he did not choose in time to follow his own profession, to pursue
another one, which he had also studied, in the profitable mystery of the
Redoute. There were many other individuals, whose commonplace appearance
did not reveal a character which perhaps they did not possess. There
were officers in all uniforms, and there were some uniforms without
officers. But all looked perfectly comme il faut, and on the whole very
select; and if the great persons endeavoured for a moment to forget