But Metternich was nothing of the sort.  As a man, in all his private relations he was amiable, gentle, and kind to everybody, and greatly revered by domestic servants and public functionaries.  By his imperial master he was treated as a brother or friend, rather than as a minister; while on his part he never presumed on any liberties, and seemed simply to obey the orders of his sovereign,—­orders which he himself suggested, with infinite tact and politeness; unlike Stein and Bismarck, who were overbearing and rude even in the presence of the sovereign and court.  Metternich had better manners and more self-control.  Indeed, he was the model of a gentleman wherever he went.  He was the hardest worked man in the empire; and he worked from the stimulus of what he conceived to be his duty, and for the welfare of the country, as he understood it.  Though one of the richest men in Austria, and of the highest social rank, he lived in frugal simplicity, despising pomp and extravagance alike.  His highest enjoyment, outside the society of his family, was music.  The whole realm of art was his delight; but he loved Nature more even than art.  He enjoyed greatly the repose of his own library,—­an apartment eighteen feet high, and containing fifteen thousand volumes.  The only unamiable thing about Metternich was his fear of being bored.  He maintained that it was impossible to find over six interesting men in any company whatever.  With people whom he trusted he was unusually frank and free-spoken.  With diplomatists he wore a mask, and made it a point to conceal his thoughts.  He deceived even Napoleon.  No one could penetrate his intentions.  Under a smooth and placid countenance, unruffled and calm on all occasions, he practised when he pleased the profoundest dissimulation; and he dissimulated by telling the truth oftener than by concealing it.  He knew what the ars celare artem meant.  When he could find leisure he was fond of travelling, especially in Italy; but he hated and avoided the discomforts of travel.  If he made distant journeys he travelled luxuriously, and wherever he went he was received with the greatest honors.  At Rome the Pope treated him as a sovereign.  The Czar Alexander commanded his magnates to give to him the same deference that they gave to himself.

While the world regarded Metternich as the most fortunate of men, he yet had many sorrows and afflictions, which saddened his life.  He lost two wives and three of his children, to all of whom he was devotedly attached, yet bore the loss with Christian resignation.  He found relief in work, and in his duties.  There were no scandals in his private life.  He professed and seemed to feel the greatest reverence for religion, in the form which had been taught him.  He detested vulgarity in every shape, as he did all ordinary vices, from which he was free.  He was self-conscious, and loved attention and honors, but was not a slave to them, like most German officials.  Nothing could be more tender and affectionate than his letters to his mother, to his wife, and to his daughters.  His father he treated with supreme reverence.  No public man ever gave more dignity to domestic pleasures.  “The truest friends of my life,” said he, “are my family and my master;” and to each he was equally devoted.  On the death of his second wife, in 1829, he writes,—­