Word: metternich
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...really was, French Historian Jean Savant went on the principle that no man is a hero to his valet. He rounded up eyewitness accounts of valets and those Napoleon treated as valets: mistresses, bodyguards and generals, tailors, aides-de-camp, and such luminaries of the age as Goethe and Metternich. Out of the intimate, often lurid documentation emerges no hero but a devastating closeup of the man who convinced Frenchmen they were a race of heroes, and split nations apart like ripe fruit to show that "given 500,000 men, one can do anything...
...days of ruffled-shirt diplomacy, when Talleyrand and Prince Metternich were in 19th century flower, a diplomat needed a backstairs source in the palace, a talent for intrigue and a good cook. Big powers acted in concert, and the small powers were expected to know their place. The financial side of diplomacy was a relatively simple matter of buying allies or buying off potential enemies. In mid-20th century diplomacy, financial dealings must be disguised under such inoffensive names as mutual assistance, economic cooperation or foreign aid, and economic aid has increasingly become regarded as a debt that rich nations...
...Catholic peasant forebears with some of the acquired awareness (and tinsel knowledge) of Viennese sophisticates. In his well-tailored morning coat, he still looks the farmer, and he seems quite out of place as he sits in his lavish offices in Vienna's Ballhausplatz, under a portrait of Metternich, who manipulated Europe from the same chamber. Yet somehow Figl is not out of place: he knows little of crafty diplomacy but has, in the words of a friend, the nerves of a draft horse...
...they either could not understand or which called up memories to turn any decent proletarian stomach. "Competent quarters should take to heart this piece of advice-a restaurant filled with workers is of more value than a 'bonne femme' in the company of Prince Esterhazy or Prince Metternich." Furthermore, it simply did not make sense "that a dish of veal should have five different names, each of which is priced higher according to its unintelligibility...
Culinary nomenclature subtly manages to convey certain historic sidelights. Metternich, whose name on any menu stands for paprika, was a firm enemy of Hungarian nationalism but a great lover of Hungary's national spice. The Esterhazy family, gastronomic historians aver, oscillated for centuries between opulence and (relative) frugality: one generation would have to economize by eating things like beefsteak a la Esterhazy (made from a cheaper cut of meat) because their heedless fathers had eaten too many Tournedos a la Metternich...