I forget who told me the following anecdote of the Marquis of Wellesley, when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. He was at table with a party of Irish gentlemen who were chiefly Orangemen, and in the dining-room hung a painting of the battle of the Boyne, which in that country is usually called the Victory of Boyne Waters. The company wishing him to pronounce an opinion, invited him to change his seat. “Surely, my Lord,” said one, “you would not turn your back on Boyne Waters?” Lord Wellesley answered, pointing to a bottle of claret that stood before him: “Oh, I never look at water when I can get wine.”
Count Alfieri, one morning, as he was sitting with the Countess of Albany, was informed that Napoleon had just issued orders for several children of the first families of Florence, as of other great cities of Italy, to be sent to Paris to serve as his pages, and afterwards enter the army. One asked, “What could be done?” Another, “How could it be avoided?” A third remarked, “If they go, their principles will be perverted, and they will be estranged from their country; and if they are not sent, their parents will be persecuted, ruined, imprisoned. What _is_ to be done with them?” Alfieri suddenly exclaimed, with great energy, “Ammazzarli!”[113]
[At Turin Miss Knight remained throughout the entire year 1836, the political events of which she sums up in a few lines. “This year,” she writes, “has been fruitful in events. Spain and Portugal in commotion, and now three parties in the former. In France an attempt to assassinate Louis Philippe; and young Louis Napoleon Bonaparte arrested at Strasburg, for his mad attempt to gain the throne—a plot supposed to have an extensive ramification. Death of Charles X., at Goritz. Loss of the French at Constantine. Great political disputes in England, and violent party spirit. A dreadful hurricane felt there, in Holland, and some other countries. Great inundations in France.” There are several miscellaneous anecdotes, however, recorded in her journal, which are not without interest.]
At a ball given by Count M., at Vienna, the French Ambassador, M. de St. Aulaire, expressed to the Countess his great admiration of a coronet of diamonds she had on her head. “Ah! quelle belle couronne, Madame la Comtesse!” “Au moins,” she replied, “elle n’est pas volée.”