XXI.

The mission of M. de Segur at Berlin was more delicate.  Its object was to detach the king of Prussia from his alliance with the emperor Leopold, whose coronation was not yet known, and to persuade the cabinet of Berlin into an alliance with revolutionary France.  This alliance held out to Prussia with its security on the Rhine the ascendency of the new-sprung ideas in Germany:  it was a Machiavelian idea, which would smile at the agitating spirit of the great Frederic, who had made of Prussia the corrosive influence (la puissance corrosive) of the empire.

These two words—­seduce and corrupt—­were all M. de Segur’s instructions.  The king of Prussia had favourites and mistresses.  Mirabeau had written in 1786, “There can be at Berlin no secrets for the ambassador of France, unless money and skill be wanting; the country is poor and avaricious, and there is no state secret which may not be purchased with three thousand louis.”  M. de Segur, imbued with these ideas, made it his first object to buy over the two favourites.  The one was daughter of Elie Enka, who was a musician in the chapel of the late king.  Handsome and witty, she had at twelve years of age attracted the notice of the king, then prince royal, and he had, at that early age, as in anticipation of his amour, bestowed on her all the care and all the cost of a royal education.  She had travelled in France and in England, and knew all the European languages; she had polished her natural genius by contact with the lettered men and artists of Germany.  A feigned marriage with Rietz, valet de chambre of the king, was the pretext for her residence at court, and gave her the opportunity for surrounding herself with the leading men in politics and literature in the city of Berlin.  Spoiled by the precocity of her fortune, yet careless as to its retention, she had allowed two rivals to dispute the king’s heart.  One, the young Countess d’Ingenheim, had just died in the flower of her youth; the other, the Countess d’Ashkof, had borne the king two children, and flattered herself, in vain, with having extricated him from the empire of Madame Rietz.

The Baron de Roll, in the name of the Count d’Artois, and the Viscount de Caraman, in the name of Louis XVI., had possessed themselves of all the avenues to this cabinet.  The Count de Goltz, ambassador from Prussia to Paris, had informed his court of the object of M. de Segur’s mission.  The report ran amongst well-informed persons that this envoy carried with him several millions (francs), destined to pay the weakness or the treason of the Berlin cabinet.

A copy of the secret instructions of M. de Segur reached Berlin two hours before him, which revealed to the king the whole plan of seduction and venality that the agent of France was to practice on his favourites and mistresses, whose character, ambition, rivalries, weaknesses, true or feigned, the means of acting by them on the mind of the king, were all and severally noted down with the security of confidence.  There was a tariff for all consciences,—­a price for every treachery.  The favourite aide-de-camp of the king, Rischofwerder, then very powerful, was to be assailed by irresistible offers, and in case his connivance should be revealed, a splendid establishment in France was to guarantee him against any eventuality.