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;