Prince Roman

(1911)

"Events which happened seventy years ago are perhaps rather too far off
to be dragged aptly into a mere conversation. Of course the year 1831 is
for us an historical date, one of these fatal years when in the presence
of the world's passive indignation and eloquent sympathies we had once
more to murmur '_Vo Victis_' and count the cost in sorrow. Not that
we were ever very good at calculating, either, in prosperity or
in adversity. That's a lesson we could never learn, to the great
exasperation of our enemies who have bestowed upon us the epithet of
Incorrigible...."

The speaker was of Polish nationality, that nationality not so much
alive as surviving, which persists in thinking, breathing, speaking,
hoping, and suffering in its grave, railed in by a million of bayonets
and triple-sealed with the seals of three great empires.

The conversation was about aristocracy. How did this, nowadays
discredited, subject come up? It is some years ago now and the precise
recollection has faded. But I remember that it was not considered
practically as an ingredient in the social mixture; and I verily
believed that we arrived at that subject through some exchange of ideas
about patriotism--a somewhat discredited sentiment, because the delicacy
of our humanitarians regards it as a relic of barbarism. Yet neither the
great Florentine painter who closed his eyes in death thinking of his
city, nor St. Francis blessing with his last breath the town of Assisi,
were barbarians. It requires a certain greatness of soul to interpret
patriotism worthily--or else a sincerity of feeling denied to the
vulgar refinement of modern thought which cannot understand the august
simplicity of a sentiment proceeding from the very nature of things and
men.

The aristocracy we were talking about was the very highest, the great
families of Europe, not impoverished, not converted, not liberalized,
the most distinctive and specialized class of all classes, for which
even ambition itself does not exist among the usual incentives to
activity and regulators of conduct.

The undisputed right of leadership having passed away from them, we
judged that their great fortunes, their cosmopolitanism brought about by
wide alliances, their elevated station, in which there is so little to
gain and so much to lose, must make their position difficult in times
of political commotion or national upheaval. No longer born to
command--which is the very essence of aristocracy--it becomes difficult
for them to do aught else but hold aloof from the great movements of
popular passion.

We had reached that conclusion when the remark about far-off events was
made and the date of 1831 mentioned. And the speaker continued: