It was not until the following year, 1835, that the question of the Prince’s marriage was publicly mooted. He was then living with his mother in Switzerland, at the villa of Arenenberg. It was erroneously reported that the Prince was about to marry Queen Doña Maria of Portugal. Not sorry, perhaps, to attract attention by denying in the Press the report of a marriage which he knew was impossible, the Prince wrote the following letter to a provincial paper:

The historian will search in vain should he attempt to identify the other ladies “whose names had been placed before” the Prince.

The next heard of is the young Englishwoman, Miss Emily Rowles, of Camden Place, Chislehurst, the home in later years of the Emperor and Empress and their son. Miss Rowles indignantly terminated the engagement—which had been definitively arranged—when she heard of the relations which existed between the Prince and Miss Howard.

When he was residing in London (1847) the Prince aspired to the hand of Lady Clementina Villiers, daughter of Lord and Lady Jersey. Lady Jersey, however, disliked the suitor, and the affair was nipped in the bud. The Prince had asked Lord Malmesbury if he had any chance of success with the young lady, and was not encouraged by the reply, which appears to have been in the nature of a gentle snub.

Miss Burdett-Coutts was not to be won by an adventurous French Prince, although he was the nephew of Napoleon I.

Turn and turn about the Prince made advances to—

1. The daughter of the Prince de Wasa, husband of a daughter of the Grand Duchess of Baden (née Stéphanie Louise Adrienne de Beauharnais).

2. Princess Adelaide of Hohenzollern, niece of Queen Victoria’s consort, and sister of that Prince Leopold whose selection by Prim to occupy the vacant throne of Spain, in 1870, led up to the war.

3. A daughter of the Prince de Wagram, who “did not please him,” and who married Prince Joachim Murat.

4. The Infante Marie Christine, a daughter of Don François de Paule, and sister of the consort of Queen Isabelle II.

Doubtless he had an affection for his cousin, Princesse Mathilde, and felt a pang when the news reached him, at Ham, of her marriage with the Russian Prince, Anatole Demidoff. Neither as President of the Republic nor as Emperor of the French would the royal houses of Europe have anything to do with the son of Queen Hortense.

Mlle. Eugénie de Montijo, Comtesse de Téba? She was unheard of as yet.

There was never any question in the minds of those who were ever so little behind the scenes that Napoleon III. so completely “lost his head” over “the beautiful Spaniard” that he seriously proposed to her without knowing whither his impetuosity was carrying him. That marriage was far from the Emperor’s intentions originally is highly probable. When, however, he saw there was nothing for it but to make the young lady his Empress, he allowed himself to be led with scarcely a word of remonstrance and only the faintest of objections. His Majesty had to deal with an experienced woman of the world in Mme. de Montijo, and with a clever one in the person of Mlle. Eugénie de Montijo. It was a question of “marriage or no marriage,” and the ladies gained the day. The flirtation was remarkably strong while it lasted, and the Emperor made himself the laughing-stock and butt of most of his monde, whose ridicule, however, could not divert His Majesty from pursuing his campaign with infatuated ardour.

Numberless stories are told of this diverting love-chase. Every year, in October, there was a great gathering of guests at Compiègne. On one of these occasions a société d’élite sat round a table playing cards while waiting for tea. It was noticed that Mlle. de Montijo sat on the Emperor’s right, and, the wives of some of the Ministers being present, the circumstance was regarded as a sign of the times. The game was vingt-et-un, and Mlle. de Montijo, who did not seem to be very expert, consulted her neighbour on the left when she was in doubt what to do. Presently, after looking at her cards, she showed them to the Emperor, letting her eyes play the part of an inquirer. Napoleon III. replied, “Keep them; you have a very good hand.” “No,” she remarked, “they’re not good enough; I want all or nothing!” and she asked for more cards, whereupon the dealer tossed her what proved to be an ace. Of course she won, and she took up the stake with a smile which was interpreted by those present as the triumph of the will over fortune.

The courting was nearly all done at Compiègne, and Mlle. de Montijo got herself much talked about by her beauty, her grace, and her coquetry with the Emperor, who, on his side, was driven almost frantic by the malicious pleasantries of his uncle, King Jérôme, who, with the wickedest smile, never omitted to ask the Emperor the first thing every morning how matters were going. The attitude of the ladies of the Court towards the woman whom they regarded as a usurper will be best understood by what follows. One night, as they were going into dinner at Compiègne, Mlle. de Montijo, conducted by Colonel de Toulongeon, was walking immediately behind Mme. Fortoul, wife of the Minister of that name. Quite by accident the first-mentioned couple took precedence of Mme. Fortoul, who said to her escort, in a tone which all could hear, “Why did you let that woman pass before us?”

Mlle. de Montijo heard the remark, and almost fainted. Her blue eyes filled with tears, she ate nothing for dinner, and replied to all the Emperor’s observations with a profound melancholy. After dinner the Emperor went up to her and said:

“Are you unwell, mademoiselle?”

“No, sire. Why do you ask?”

“Because I noticed that you ate nothing, and I suppose that——”

“No sire; I repeat, I am not suffering; but here, in this very room—here, chez vous, I have been insulted in the most flagrant manner, and I think it my duty to tell your Majesty that I intend to leave Compiègne this very evening.”

The Emperor begged her to explain, and the young lady told him, as well as she could through her tears, what had happened.

“Mademoiselle,” said the Emperor, “promise me that you will not leave Compiègne, and I promise you, in turn, that to-morrow nobody will dare to insult you.” And the next day came the Emperor’s offer of marriage.

The Emperor’s intention to take to himself a wife was announced on January 22, 1853, by a speech from the throne, in the course of which His Majesty said the union which he was about to contract was not in accordance with political tradition; but that was an advantage. “She who is the object of my choice is of high birth. French by heart, by education, by remembrance of the blood which her father shed for the cause of the Empire, she has, as a Spaniard, the advantage of not having in France a family upon whom it would be necessary to bestow honours and dignities. Endowed with all the qualities of the soul, she will be an ornament to the throne, even as in the hour of danger she will become one of its courageous supports. Catholic and pious, she will address to Heaven the same prayers that I myself offer for the happiness of France. Gracious and good, she will, I firmly hope, revive, in the same position, the virtues of the Empress Joséphine. Then, gentlemen, I say to France, ‘I have preferred a woman that I love and respect to an unknown woman, whose alliance might have had advantages mixed with sacrifices.’ Presently, at Notre Dame, I shall present the Empress to the people and to the army. The confidence which they have in me will cause them to give their sympathies to her whom I have chosen; and you, gentlemen, when you have learnt to know her, will be convinced that this time again I have been inspired by Providence.”

Thus did Napoleon III. reverse the policy of his uncle, who divorced and abandoned a woman who was loved to espouse a daughter of the Cæsars; the former renounced the possibility of a royal marriage in order to wed a woman whom he loved. The Court of the Tuileries was greatly divided on the subject of the Emperor’s marriage. King Jérôme, Drouyn de Lhuys (Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Persigny (Minister of the Interior) were, with others, in favour of a dynastic alliance; Morny, Fould, and the military party (nicknamed “the clan of the amoureux”), at the head of whom were Edgar Ney, Toulongeon, etc., were for the marriage with the fair daughter of the Montijos. The Emperor had, however, made up his mind, and, despite his hesitating, uncertain character, which presently accentuated itself still more, he resisted all the pressure put upon him by his family. In vain did Princesse Mathilde throw herself, theatrically, at his feet, beseeching him to abandon a marriage which could only lower his prestige; Cæsar was immovable. Drouyn de Lhuys felt so strongly about the marriage that he asked the Emperor’s permission to resign his portfolio; but he must have changed his mind when he went to do homage to Mlle. de Montijo. “I congratulate you,” she said; “I thank you for the advice which you have given to the Emperor relative to his marriage. Your advice was similar to mine.”

“The Emperor has betrayed me, then,” said the Minister.

“No; it is not betraying you to render homage to your sincerity, and to tell me the opinion of a devoted servant—one who has expressed my own sentiments. Like you, I have represented to the Emperor that he ought to consider the interests of his throne; but I have not had to be his judge, and to decide whether he is right or wrong.”

De Morny told one of his colleagues that the Emperor, having once got an idea into his head, could not be disabused of it. More than one of his courtiers said: “He is mad, and this marriage is an act of the grossest stupidity.”

If the Emperor believed in his star, so did Mlle. de Montijo place an implicit reliance upon hers. A gipsy fortune-teller once told her that she would be a Queen. She might have made a good—nay, a splendid—marriage long before she set her cap at the Emperor. The Duc d’Ossuna was madly in love with her, and wished to make her his Duchess. The Duc de Sesto proposed to her, but she declared she would only marry a Frenchman.

The Emperor’s private friends were more difficult than the Ministers to argue with, and he had many a mauvais quart d’heure with Mme. Drouyn de Lhuys, Mme. Fortoul,[32] and Mme. de St. Arnaud, the latter the wife of the celebrated Marshal who fought with us in the Crimea. These grandes dames sneered at the fair interloper, as they considered Eugénie de Montijo. When they were at Compiègne they did all in their power to snub her and make her look small. To such a point, indeed, did they carry their persecution that the victim complained to the Emperor, who, observing that all the ladies in question were close by, broke a branch off a tree, and, twisting it into a crown, put it on Eugénie’s head, with the remark (which all had the satisfaction of hearing), “Take this until I give you the other!”

Judging by those who are, or were, in a position to know, it would seem that the Empress was somewhat coquettish. Her Imperial Majesty, however, never publicly compromised herself, as the ex-Queen Isabella of Spain is credited with having done. She was flirty, that was all: the sort of woman that “Gyp” has sketched in “Autour du Mariage”; perhaps “Gyp” got her idea of Paulette d’Alaly from the former fair ruler of the Tuileries. “You know,” said the Emperor to one of his Ministers who had complained of the Empress’s attitude towards him—“you know the Empress is very hasty, but, au fond, she likes you very much.” She was not, however, hypocritical, but may be compared to a child who has got tired of a toy and cries for another. She became possessed of all manner of fancies, and was exceedingly romantic, while remaining perfectly mistress of herself.

“It is a delicate question,” writes one of her biographers, “and I approach it with the greatest circumspection; but was the Empress the passionnée she was said to be, and was she faithful to the Emperor? Merely to ask the question was to misunderstand the Empress. Had she any love intrigues? Was she always the woman who is said to have confessed to the Emperor before marriage, ‘J’ai aimée, mais je suis restée Mademoiselle de Montijo’? The answer to this is—‘No; the Empress had no weaknesses. Yes; the Empress always remained the slave of her marital duties.’” There were, doubtless, times when it seemed as if she thought of somebody of more consequence than her imperial consort; but her leanings in this direction appear to have been platonic—the griserie to have been of very slight duration. “It was with her as with a fire of straw, which burnt and burnt, making one think and fear that it was going to destroy everything. Then the individual who flattered himself with having set light to it was surprised at the flame which had illuminated and warmed him, and turned away, his only consolation being the parody of a celebrated sonnet. The Empress was one of those women who like to be made (platonic) love to. If she flirted, it was without real peril to her honour and sans rien céder de son intimité.” When she was a prominent figure in the salon of the Comtesse de Laborde, it is told of her that she was “très libre d’allures.” Eugénie de Montijo tutoyait people very freely, and when she ascended the throne she made any lady who had been a friend in former days “thou” and “thee” her as of yore.

Much may be forgiven the Empress in consideration of her bringing up. From the first she knew what opinion the Emperor really entertained of her—how he saw in her a beautiful woman whom he had marked down as a pretty plaything, the toy of a week, a month, or mayhap a year. She quickly undeceived him, and brought him to his senses almost ere he had taken leave of them. It must not be forgotten that she was thrown among those who composed the gayest Court in Europe. Money was of no more value in the Paris of the “sixties” than it is to-day in the neighbourhood of Monte Carlo, where a sovereign is thought less of than a fourpenny-piece in London. That was the time when champagne baths were the vogue, and beauty was worth ten times the market value of respectability. Those were the days when adventurers flocked to Paris as to a promised land, when the Emperor’s favourites—the De Mornys, the De Persignys, et hoc genus omne—got concessions for every “enterprise” that fertile brains could devise, and when to be “in the swim” was to be in the way of making your fortune.

At the reveillon du jour de l’an at the Tuileries—December-January, 1853—the Emperor, in accordance with French custom, kissed all the ladies on the cheek. He approached Mlle. de Montijo with the same agreeable object; but she drew back, and, curtseying, said to the astonished Sovereign, “Sire, only my husband shall ever kiss me.” This rebuff would have chilled most men, but the Emperor took it very good-humouredly, although such a display of excessive modesty was a new experience for him. Among those who had tried to put Mlle. de Montijo on her guard against the Emperor’s compromising attentions was the Duchesse de Bassano. “Take care,” said this lady; “you are preparing either regret or remorse for yourself. But do not forget that I warned you.” A few days later the engagement was known, and Mlle. de Montijo was able to write to the Duchesse: “I marry Louis without regret and without remorse.”

Towards the close of 1849—when the poor man whom she had seen under arrest, after the Boulogne fiasco, was in the second year of his Presidency—a Spanish gipsy told Mlle. de Montijo that she would marry an Emperor. The señorita knew very well that at the moment there was not one marriageable Emperor in existence, and she asked the gitana if she did not mean a King or a Prince. “No,” was the reply, “I mean an Emperor—an Emperor of a great country.” “Then it must be Souloque,” said the Comte de Breda, then a French attaché, “for there is no other Emperor in the matrimonial market, and he would not be particular as to the number of his wives.”

The proposed marriage was very obnoxious to some of the Emperor’s Ministers; but when they began to remonstrate, His Majesty cut them short with that abruptness which characterized him when his wishes were opposed. “Gentlemen, there is nothing more to say. My marriage with Mlle. de Montijo is an arranged affair. I am resolved upon it.”

The discomfited Ministers withdrew, but they did not cease to protest. There were people whose anger led them to say unpleasant things about both mother and daughter. The former, they asserted, held a very free-and-easy salon at her hôtel in the Place Vendôme. People gathered there after the opera, and the “goings-on” were of the liveliest. “Adventures” of the young lady in former years were fabricated, and openly discussed. People who stuck at nothing asserted that she had had a “past.”

One of the numerous malcontents was M. Thiers, who appears to have had a sardonic kind of humour. “There is nothing to fear from people who are only tipsy,” he murmured; “but they are to be dreaded when they get quite drunk.” The French appreciate this description of wit, and the saying “went the rounds.”

Prince Napoleon, for reasons, and his sister, Princesse Mathilde, for none, bitterly inveighed against what they regarded as sheer lunacy on the Emperor’s part. The Prince, who, as long as there was no legitimate son of the Emperor in existence, stood next in the succession, had some sort of excuse for denouncing his cousin’s marriage with “a mere femme du monde,” who had nothing but her good looks to recommend her. Princesse Mathilde, who had contracted a most unhappy alliance with Prince Anatole Demidoff, but had been long freed from her tyrant, made theatrical appeals to the Emperor to abandon his intention. What was to be done with a man whose infatuation made him cover with kisses Nieuwerkerke’s little bust of Mlle. de Montijo?

M. Vieil-Castel, a Rochefort born out of his time, marvelled what the Emperor would do when an Empress was at the head of a Court numbering among the officials so many men whose lives were the reverse of edifying. “Perhaps a day would come when Mlle. de Montijo would see herself allegorically depicted as a Hercules cleansing the Augean stables.”

The Emperor, however, was supported by a few, among whom was the celebrated Lamartine. Another of the friendly minority declared that His Majesty was doing the right thing in marrying a lady whom he loved, and refusing to bargain for “some scrofulous German Princess with feet as large as a man’s.”

Before the projected marriage was officially announced, Princesse Mathilde gave a ball. Among the guests were the Emperor, the Duc de Morny, the Comtesse de Montijo, and her daughter. The Marquise de Contades wrote, in later years, of this entertainment: “The Emperor, as usual, paid the greatest attention to Mlle. de Montijo. For more than an hour she and the Emperor were engaged in a confidential chat, which no one had the audacity to interrupt. Mlle. de Montijo bears herself easily and gracefully. She and her mother both hope for a marriage, and all their diplomacy is directed to securing it. Everybody courts Mlle. de Montijo, curries favour with her, and seeks her intervention with the Emperor on their behalf. Ministers make much of her. She goes to all the fêtes. She is the actual rising sun.”

Mlle. de Montijo, Comtesse de Téba, in November and December, 1852, and in the following month, monopolized attention in Paris. When she appeared in her box at the opera (Mauget tells us) people had no ears for the music, but they had eyes to see the young lady’s peerless loveliness and graceful bearing. Nothing else mattered. She looked the Empress. The courrieristes of the papers followed her about; nothing escaped their lynx eyes. In newspaper argot, she made splendid “copy.”

“Yesterday and to-day the Comtesse de Téba, accompanied by her mother, the Comtesse de Montijo, visited several shops on the boulevards and in the Rue Vivienne. The future Empress, being recognized by the crowd, was most sympathetically greeted. The hearts of all were conciliated by her simple yet distinguished manners, and by the alms which she bestowed upon several poor women whom she encountered during her stroll.”

Sharp-tongued ladies like the Marquise de Taisey-Chatenoy (but this amiable person is not of much account) had an abundance of cutting things to say of Mlle. de Montijo when she had won the imperial crown. For example: “The Empress has a great taste for jeux d’esprit—I do not know why, for it is not by excess of brilliancy in this direction that she shines.” And M. Irénée Mauget[33] is even more unflattering: “Of changeable disposition, she lacked judgment and reason. She was excessively nervous. Very impulsive, she acted under the influence of good or bad moods, and slighted and wounded many people by her unjust anger, regretting afterwards the pain she had caused. She was not untruthful.... Her sudden elevation, although not unforeseen, dazzled her—stunned her somewhat. Not having been born to occupy a throne, the transition was too brusque. She lacked proportion, and wanted to appear too much the Empress. She continued to be very much attached and very faithful to some of those who had been her intimates in early days, but she was capricious to most of the others, giving and withholding her favours with disconcerting fickleness. She was not loved like the Emperor. When she appeared in public she acknowledged with inimitable grace the salutations she received, and the French, very gallant, were won by this charm.... Had she been solidly educated she would have been capable of exercising the absolute power which she coveted.”

M. Mauget apparently shares M. Rochefort’s unfavourable opinion of the Comtesse de Montijo, who, simultaneously with her daughter’s advancement in life, was said to have become miserly. “She made purchases right and left, and sent the bills to her daughter, sometimes to the Emperor. But Napoleon, always strongly épris of Eugénie, often shut his eyes at his mother-in-law’s demands and revelled in the delights of the honeymoon. Was it the same with Eugénie? We may be permitted to doubt it. What she loved especially in her husband was the Emperor.”

The Madrid journals waxed enthusiastic over the engagement—e.g., the España (January 26, 1853):

The Duchesse de Dino wrote:

Another correspondent wrote to the Duchesse de Dino’s son (February 15), telling him of the flood of sonnets, pamphlets, and riddles which inundated the Empress’s salons. “As to me,” this unknown Parisian said, “the Empress made a conquest of me at Notre Dame—not by her beauty, but by her dignity and her pious, thoughtful bearing.”

The Maréchale d’Albuféra gave the Duchesse a specimen of the jokes made about the Empress. The Maréchale, after noting that “the Empress has blue eyes, and paints her eyebrows and eyelashes black,” asked, “Do you know why the Empress Eugénie is the best horsewoman in France? Because she leapt over the barrière du Trône! This is one of the jokes with which we amuse ourselves here.”

The Duchesse, as a talented diplomatist, noted: “The Empress, until now, decides nothing for herself. She submits everything to the Emperor, even as to the dress which she ought to wear.”

On December 7, 1860, the Duchesse wrote:

The foreign Powers did not display particular alacrity in “recognizing” Napoleon III. There seemed to be much curiosity anent the genealogy of the Emperor’s future bride, and an elaborate statement was issued by the Heralds’ College at Paris, informing all whom it might concern that the lady who was about to become Empress of the French belonged “to the House of Guzman, whose origin dates back to the earliest times of the Spanish Monarchy,” several historians asserting that the Guzmans were the issue of royal blood. “All the branches of this family have played a distinguished part in history. Amongst them were the Dukes of Medina, Las Torres, Medina-Sidonia, and Olivares; the Counts of Montijo, of Téba (or Téva), and of Villaverde; the Marquis de Ardales, the Marquis de la Algera, etc., grandees of Spain. The Duchesse de Téba, Comtesse de Montijo, descends from this last branch. This is not the first time this family has been called to ascend the throne, for in 1633 a daughter of the eighth Duke of Medina-Sidonia married the King of Portugal, Dom Juan IV. of Braganza. The Counts of Montijo have the same arms as the Dukes of Medina-Sidonia; they are near relations, and bear the same name, which is De Guzman.”

CHAPTER V

CÆSAR’S WIFE

A phrase uttered by the Empress provoked some harsh criticism at the time, and has been, even to this day, quoted against her. It was ungraciously and unjustly assumed that she had special ideas on virtue. But there is really nothing in her remark to justify the implication that she took advantage of that moral freedom which she sometimes apparently seemed disposed to favour.

It was at the Tuileries that, in the early years of the reign, she was credited with saying:

Brought up in a milieu quite foreign to any Court (that of Spain always excepted), the Empress, as Sovereign, sometimes lacked that overpowering gravity which women destined to reign are taught from the cradle. She believed sincerely, and without arrière pensée, that it was open to her to enjoy life as she found it. She saw no harm in causing the hearts of men to beat with sentiments which really only flattered her. She was curious to read the souls of others; and the adulation bestowed upon her interested and moved her as a powerful romance would have done. In a word, she was the popular idol. She knew that she was adored, and, receiving all this homage in a perfectly passive manner, felt that she was surrounding herself by friends and devoted admirers, whose sole object was to serve her and to love her. Besides, she was very fond of discussion and argument, and consequently sought the society of men capable, by their esprit, of entertaining her.

Fully aware that a person cannot charm and fascinate people without taking some little trouble over it, the Empress, before talking to a politician, a savant, an author, or an artist of any kind, “got up” her subjects, and made up her mind as to what she must say in order to take the man captive. Moreover, she was as careful to conquer him by the attractions of her person as by those of her conversation; and when she had captured him, when she felt assured that he belonged to her—“when,” in her own phrase, “she found his homage agreeable and amusing,” when she knew that she had stirred his heart, then, and only then, she checked the pretty poem or the half-finished sketch, and wrote with her own fair hand at the bottom of the page which she had read the one word “Fin!” All this was, no doubt, imprudent, and not in conformity with the gravity which ought to have been hers: it may even have been cruel; but what pretty (and virtuous) woman will rise to blame the Empress? What pretty (and virtuous) woman will dare to say that she has never acted in the same way in the drawing-rooms which she frequents? And what man, not entirely virtuous, but amoureux, has not been the victim of similar feminine perfidies? “Le péché veniel des unes, les bourgeoises; deviendrait-il le péché mortel des autres, les reines?” Shall we be wrong in answering the question in the negative?

From the outset the Empress displayed no little fickleness, now lavishing attentions upon those who pleased her, then suddenly dismissing them with a word or a gesture, and henceforth ignoring them. She appeared to act upon uncontrollable impulses, the most glaring temperamental defect in her otherwise generous nature. It was one of the “defects of her qualities,” calling less for censure than for record in an impartial narrative. With all this, however, the Empress was loyal and susceptible of great devotion to her friends, and one sought without finding anything approaching egotism or vaingloriousness in her many inconsistencies. When she gave her hand to a woman or a man she was perfectly sincere, and when she sealed a friendship, or an attachment, with some signal mark of her approbation, she did so in all good faith and in all honour. The Emperor deplored, and with reason, the waywardness displayed by his consort in the choice of her friends, and had often to allay the bitter enmities and discontent which she heedlessly, and perhaps unconsciously, aroused.

The cynical saying of François I., “Souvent femme varie,” might have been applied to the Empress, who was as fickle in her sensations as in her sentiments. She was a Spaniard, and to that fact may be attributed her somewhat eccentric manner. Her character was truly remarkable; she took all sorts of fancies into her head: was very romantic even while remaining practical, prosaic, and mistress of herself. In her romantic disposition the Empress, strange to say, found a certain strength, as letters written by her in the first year of her marriage confirm. One of these epistles may be cited in proof of this view of her character.

The Empress, much pressed by Mme. de M., one of the leading members of the Legitimist party, to obtain for her husband a diplomatic post, did not rest until she had gratified the applicant’s wishes. It should not be forgotten that the Emperor always cherished the idea of rallying to his dynasty the notabilities of the Faubourg St. Germain, and showed every courtesy to those Legitimists who attended the Court of the Tuileries. It is doubtful if the Empress seconded his efforts in this direction, but in the matter alluded to she certainly laid herself out to do a kindly action.

“Mme. de M.,” wrote the Empress to the Emperor, “wants the vacancy at The Hague for her husband, and I much wish him to have it.” She added, as one who was worried by repeated applications of this kind: “Comme ça on me laisserait tranquille!”

A week afterwards the Empress wrote: “I saw Mme. de M. on Sunday, and she seemed perfectly satisfied.”

Writing immediately afterwards about another lady—also one of the Royalist group—for whom she had done something, Her Majesty said: “As to Mme. de C., up to now she hasn’t uttered a word of thanks to me. If you should see her—especially if you should see her husband—say that he does not owe his post entirely to his personal merits. As to gratitude, I have my own opinion about that; and, as I never expect any, I am never disappointed.”

These letters reveal a melancholy philosophy, throwing much light upon the Emperor’s entourage, and showing that, if the Sovereigns did their utmost to conciliate members of all parties, they were too often rewarded only with ingratitude by those on whom they had bestowed favours, or to whom they had accorded high positions in the public service.

That the Empress, strong in her own virtue, should have been grievously pained, and sometimes exasperated, by her inflammatory consort’s peccadilloes is not very surprising. That there were “scenes” was but natural. It was, then, all the more to her credit that in public she invariably showed the Emperor the greatest deference; even in her own apartments, if he appeared, as he sometimes did, when the Empress was entertaining friends, she would rise directly he entered the room, and make him a profound reverence. At one time, too, she sought to amuse the Emperor in a variety of ways, and when one or other of her suite mustered up sufficient courage to repeat to her the rumours and the cancans of the hour, Her Majesty would remark: “Really, they blame us for amusing ourselves at the Tuileries! Surely the very least I can do is to give some distraction to the poor Emperor (who is ennuyé all day by politics), and show him some pretty women!”

It need hardly be said that the observation, coupled with what the Empress had previously said touching the conjugal fidelity of women generally, did not tend to diminish the reputation for légèreté which she had acquired even before her accession to the throne. This frivolity, although perhaps it was more apparent than real, was made the most of by certain ladies, and particularly by the Princesse de Metternich.

That there were evil counsellors among his consort’s bosom friends none knew better than the Emperor, who said to her:

Did not events prove that the Emperor was right?

Quite early in the reign the Empress became a dissatisfied and disappointed woman. Many untoward circumstances combined to produce, with welcome intervals, a disorganization of the family life at the Tuileries, or wherever the Court happened to be. There were, too, those famous charades, remarkable for the lavish display of feminine charms, and resulting in much hostile criticism at second-hand. This entertainment was referred to by the Empress in a letter written by her to the Emperor (July 13, 1860):

Does not this letter show the Empress at her best?

Mlle. de Montijo, wrote M. de Mazade in the Revue des Deux Mondes shortly after her engagement, “impressed one by a sort of virile grace, which might easily have made her a heroine of romance, and before assuming the imperial diadem she proudly wore that crown of hair whose colour a Venetian painter would have loved.”

The relations which existed between the Emperor and Empress used to be discussed in the most unreserved fashion, not only in Paris clubs and salons, but in many London circles. All manner of stories were told about their Majesties. Some strong sidelights are thrown upon the lives of the imperial couple by Mme. Carette, in her entertaining “Souvenirs.” If that estimable woman be accurate (and as she was “reader” to the Empress for several years, she should be, and, I have been recently informed, is, a competent witness), the trouble began some eight years after the marriage, by which time “the Empress had known more than one sadness.”

“The Emperor,” says Mme. Carette, whose resemblance to the Empress seems to have been very marked, “led away by his old habits of pleasure, by the easy manners of some of those by whom he was surrounded, was not invariably mindful of his consort’s feelings as Sovereign and wife. The Empress, in all the splendour of her youth and beauty, had made acquaintance with the subtle poison which corrupts all which is most delicate in woman’s heart. After distractions, some of which had a regrettable notoriety, the Emperor, who, like many men, attached no importance to his fleeting liaisons, appeared to be always surprised that he had wounded his wife’s feelings at a time when she occupied the largest place in his life. Sisterly friendship had supported the Empress in these trying experiences. The Duchesse d’Albe, all sweetness and tenderness, consoled her sister, whose ardent nature increased her sufferings tenfold. She helped the Empress to reconcile herself to her hours of trouble and bitterness and to find strength to pardon [the Emperor]. When the Duchesse d’Albe died, the Empress felt for the first time the loneliness which grandeur brings with it. She remained alone with her grief, with nothing to distract her, having no courage to fulfil her worldly duties. Her health suffered greatly, and the doctors urged the Emperor to persuade her to travel in order to remove the painful strain which she was enduring. The Empress accordingly left on a visit to Scotland, where she remained a few weeks.[36] She returned to Paris much improved in health, ready to take up the duties of her position, but she had been irremediably touched by her melancholy situation. From that time dated a profound change in her tastes, as well as in her habits. Her youthfulness seemed to have vanished, and under the charming features of the woman ripened by sorrow appeared the Sovereign whom one had not hitherto seen.”

When Napoleon III. was writing his “Life of Cæsar,” and casting ambitious glances at a chair in the Academy, a poet wrote a few verses on the Emperor’s work, referring to him as the “greatest Cæsar of these later years.” In return for this compliment the Emperor sent his panegyrist a diamond ring and an invitation to call at the Tuileries. The Emperor received him very graciously, and, after some casual talk, asked him if he were married. “No, sire,” was the reply. “Why don’t you marry? Would you marry a lady who is young, beautiful, of ardent disposition, and with a handsome dowry, if you met such a one who was willing to have you?” The young man began to wonder if he was in, not the Palace of the Tuileries, of the glories of which he had heard and read so much, but in Aladdin’s cave. But, though dazed at the prospect, he speedily recovered himself, and replied: “Yes, sire, I should be only too happy.” “Well, then,” said the Emperor, “come here to-morrow night at ten o’clock, and I will present you to her.”

At the appointed time the poet, still rather fancying that he was dreaming, entered the Palace, and was immediately ushered into the Emperor’s cabinet. Napoleon III. was in morning dress; he donned a large cloak and a hat which concealed his identity, and led the poet to a side door. A carriage was waiting, and in it they were driven to a bijou villa which stood in spacious grounds in a retired part of Paris.

“My dear Marie,” said the Emperor to the beautiful woman, scarcely more than a girl just out of her teens, “allow me to present my friend, Monsieur ——, who comes as a suitor for your hand.” With this the Emperor retired, and was seen no more!

The poet found the lady quite willing to accept his wooing, and, knowing that the imperial favour depended upon his discretion, did not make any inquiries as to madame’s history. A few weeks later they were quietly married, and the husband found that his bride’s dowry was the handsome sum of £100,000. He was never again invited to the Tuileries, nor did he ever have another interview with the Emperor. To his surprise, one morning he received an appointment in the Diplomatic Service in a distant country. Needless to say, he accepted the post, and resided, with his wife, at the scene of his labours until his death more than a quarter of a century ago. His widow returned to Paris and married a Russian noble. When the news of the poet-diplomatist’s death reached Paris, General Fleury, who knew the faiblesses of Napoleon III. better than most men, pleasantly remarked: “Ah! he was a lucky fellow to get such a wife; but it was hard luck for the Emperor to have to pay such a price to get rid of so charming an encumbrance!”

Mlle. de Montijo had not been an Empress many weeks before her greatness and the luxe by which she was surrounded began to be distasteful. “She had never loved the Emperor. Her heart remained faithful to the Marquis d’Alcanises, her former fiancé. The Marquise de Bedmar, one of Her Majesty’s Spanish friends, told me that the Empress said to her, on the eve of the wedding: ‘If Alcanises came to fetch me, I would go away with him!’ But Alcanises never came, and, some years later, when he was the Duc de Sesto, married the widow of the Duc de Morny.”[37]

The strict etiquette which the Emperor insisted should be observed weighed upon the lady who had hitherto revelled in complete independence, while she was exasperated at the surveillance of the Palace ladies, even the domestics. This irritation disappeared as if by magic after she and her consort had visited Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, and seen how things were done at the model English Court. How bored she was she showed very plainly in a letter written to one of the friends of the old days, begging to be “thou’d” as in former times: “Je suis seule dans mon palais, et très chagrinée des bouderies [sulkiness] que je sens autour de moi.”

A collection of what M. Mauget describes as “Notes of a Member of the Imperial Police” provides curious reading: