Illl I IBRARY 
 
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 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE
 
 MY PARIS NOTE-BOOK. 
 
 \ olume, cloth, price Gs. 
 
 ipace forbids us to make quotations from 
 
 1 things in which the book abounds. There 
 
 lightfully written chapter on the Chamber of 
 
 Deputies and it- principal luminaries, while ofThiers, 
 
 . >. and others the 'Englishman' 
 
 and diverting bits of gossip to tell 
 
 "This is a volume of very amusing gossip about 
 the two Napoleons, the principal men and women of 
 the Third Empire, the Presidents of the French 
 
 Republic, and the drama, literature, and society of 
 eh capital during the last thirty years." — The 
 
 \ andam hi mg experience of Paris 
 
 wed with observation and retentiveness, 
 and burdened with no superfluous discretion. . . . 
 H in amusing, gossiping style, and brims 
 
 Hi- work is thus light and 
 agreeable reading, and will not be easily laid down 
 by th irch of amusement." — Notes and 
 
 LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.
 
 Undercurrents of 
 The Second Empire 
 
 Notes and Recollections 
 
 BY & 
 
 ALBERT D: VANDAM 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS," "MY PARIS NOTE-BOOK,'" Etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 
 1897 
 
 (All rights reserved)
 
 Vc 
 
 V3 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 How the Empire was restored. — The influence of the Napoleonic 
 legend during the Restoration and the Monarchy of Louis 
 Philippe. — The Bourbons and Cambronne. — The Due 
 d'Angouleme and Drouot. — The Duchesse d'Angouleme at 
 Avignon. — Her attempt to convert a veteran of Napoleon.— 
 Charles X. and another veteran of la Grande Armee. — Louvel 
 on his trial for the murder of the Due de Berri. — The propa- 
 ganda of the Napoleonic legend by the poets. — Talleyrand's 
 journey to Vienna in 1830 in quest of the Due de Reichstadt. 
 — Louis Philippe's attitude. — Thiers' part in the removal of 
 Napoleon's remains from St. Helena. — Prince Louis Napoleon's 
 knowledge of all this. — The Bonaparte family.— Jerome, ex- 
 King of Westphalia, and his son. — Jerome at Hesse-Cassel. — 
 Louis Napoleon's one ally among the Bonaparte family.— 
 Mathilde Bonaparte, Comtesse Demidoff. — The rest of Louis 
 Napoleon's relations, legitimate and illegitimate. — A story of 
 Louis Napoleon's impecuniosity. — Mathilde and her cousin. — 
 Mathilde and Nicolas I. — Nicolas Land Prince Louis Napoleon. 
 —Mathilde keeps her cousin posted up.- — Why Louis Napoleon's 
 attempt at Strasburg was not more severely punished . Page 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 How the Empire was restored {continued). — A game of political 
 bluff. — The players. — Lamartine, practically the only honest 
 man among them. — Cavaignac, Thiers, Victor Hugo, and 
 Changarnier. — Prince Louis Napoleon's opinion of them.— An 
 estimate of his opponents, proving that Louis Napoleon was one 
 of the most brilliant talkers of his time. — The game of bluff"
 
 NTENTS 
 
 ,,t tin- playei Loui ■ Napoleon's luck 
 
 l U the end of the 
 
 huffling the i ards and 
 
 ■ iiic game ami the bai kei "i 
 Pa 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Some silhouettes. 
 
 : the Chamber during part of the Second 
 
 t the Empire (?). — 
 
 maparte, otherwise Plon- 
 
 Why Fleury rallied to the cause of the Prince- 
 
 in the Coup d'Etat. — The state of the 
 
 ■ .<• of the Coup d'Etat. — 
 
 . James de Rothschild. — The supposed 
 
 .: th( army. Did the army want bribing?— Why 
 
 • ria to fmd a Minister for War, and why 
 
 ■ nt Dr. Louis Veron, the proprietor of the 
 
 Thiers and Veron. — Thiers, the irrepressible 
 
 A glimpse of the minor collaborateurs, Maupas, 
 
 Magnan Page 58 
 
 CHAPTER 1\" 
 
 I Empire. — The new Emperor's real friends. 
 
 number according to the Emperor. — Mocquard, the 
 
 tary. — An absolutely unknown scene at 
 
 .Her the Coup d'Etat. — Plon-Plon's and 
 
 towards the new Emperor. — A dastardly 
 
 .nation on their part to prevent the Emperor marrying. — 
 
 ' on for a comedy. — The Emperor 
 
 ested comedy a reality. — A hasty 
 
 te-nuptial love affairs. — Mdlle. 
 
 ante-nuptial flirtations. — Louis Napoleon's search 
 
 • limitation between Queen Victoria, Prince 
 
 Hohenlohe, and Lord Palmerston. — Louis 
 
 intention with regard to Mdlle. de Montijo. 
 
 forthcoming union and the effect it 
 
 ind in Prance.— Dupin aini gives his views. 
 
 ' ermain and the Orleanists' salons. — The 
 
 Honore, the Chausse<: d'Antin and the Faubourg 
 
 Page 90
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The beginnings of the Empire {continued). — The Tuileries in the 
 early part of '53. — A conversation between Vely Pasha, the then 
 Turkish Ambassador and an English nobleman. — An attempt to 
 poison the Queen's mind against Louis Napoleon. — Palmerston 
 supported by the Duke of Wellington takes the Emperor's part. — 
 France's naval resources at the beginning of the Empire. — The 
 only question which the Emperor could take up in a hostile spirit 
 then. — The problem proposed by the Turkish Ambassador and 
 worked out by the author of these pages. — The real reason of the 
 French support of England during the Crimean War. — The 
 household of the new Imperial couple. — Adventurers and worse. 
 — A sponsor wanted for the new Empress. — The Bonapartes in 
 clover. — A suitor for the hand of Princess Mary of Cambridge 
 (the present Duchess of Teck). — Palmerston nips the contem- 
 plated proposal in the bud. — The immediate entourage of the 
 new Imperial couple. — The Emperor as a scapegoat. — The 
 period immediately before and immediately after the outbreak 
 of the Crimean War. — The news of the first victories arouses 
 little or no enthusiasm. — The Imperial couple's disappointment 
 at the failure of their combination. — Sudden and almost un- 
 expected success by means of a cleverly enacted scene before 
 Lord Cowley. — The invitation to visit England. — The visit 
 itself. — The comedy enacted an hour after the arrival in London 
 of the august visitors. — London applauds and England follows 
 suit. — A reception at the French Embassy in London.— An 
 American diplomatist and his awkward remarks. — The Queen's 
 return visit to Paris. — Comments in the streets. — A few lines 
 of criticism by a French officer P a £ e I2 ° 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The transformation of Paris. — The attempts in that direction of 
 Napoleon 1 1 1.'s predecessors. — Louis XIV. and Mansart. — The 
 origin of the idea. — The opposition to its realisation. — Not a 
 single honest objection. — The objections being overruled, the 
 erstwhile objectors fatten and batten on the scheme. — A chapter 
 of dishonesty, jobbery, corruption and greed. — The story of the 
 Quartier Marbceuf. — An unknown episode in the life of Balzac. 
 — An unpublished page from the " Memoires " of Alexandre 
 Dumas, the elder. — The probable origin of a chapter of Dickens's 
 Great Expectations — Birds of Prey in the Law Courts. — The 
 late Jules Ferry's beginnings. — A historical pamphlet. — The
 
 N il NTS 
 
 luthor. Jules Ferry's likeness 
 
 :i i ustody oi .1 gendarme." — 
 
 -li.un balance-sheets and stock- 
 
 enl He proposes to take 
 
 nn, m imitation of Napoleon [.'s strolls with 
 
 Page 156 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ; n War. The attempt of 14th 
 
 it fault- The Emperor's estimate 
 
 raculous esi ape <>f the Emperor and 
 
 1 nts of the police system. — The Emperor's 
 
 Previous attempts on Louis 
 
 I lie Emperor's want of circumspection with 
 
 A pseudo-fairytale published by the Belgian 
 
 wish that the authors of the 
 
 ot-fre< I he reason why. — The prospect 
 
 1 itholic priesthood. — The respite 
 
 \ria to the Emperor. — The Emperor's 
 
 lament. — The police once 
 
 mo:' ige with the daughter of Victor 
 
 id.— The hand of Cavour. — Why he considered the 
 
 A comparison between Cavour and Bis- 
 
 thal of Plon-Plon and Princesse Clotilde. — A 
 
 Leopold I.— The Franco-Austrian 
 
 '.' • e •:;• outset of it the Emperor becomes 
 
 n condition of the army.— Some instances of 
 
 ■ r of Sedan foreshadowed in the 
 
 •a. — A remark of the Empress on the 
 
 ■ L — A narrow escape of the Emperor. — A 
 
 : Mai Mahon.— The battle of Magenta won 
 
 Page 183 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The prosperity.— Henri IV'.s 
 
 of the peasantry and the 
 
 the Third Republic and the 
 
 Empire.— The Emperor as a bon-vivant. 
 
 tionofa /.—The Emperor's attitude 
 
 ral and Thiers in particular.-- 
 
 Momy— Life at the
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 Tuileries. — Every one master except the master himself. — The 
 twenty-three new deputies of the Opposition, — Buffooning at 
 Court. — The Clergy. — The Abbe Bauer and Crdmieux. — 
 Monseigneur Dupanloup. — Warriors. — Count Tascher de la 
 Pagerie. — General de Cotte's remarks at the outbreak of the 
 Franco-Austrian War. — " As yet, however, the cloud is not bigger 
 than a hand." — Theresa's " Rien n'est sacre pour un sapeur," and 
 the lesson it conveyed. — Vivier, the Emperor's double. — Vivier at 
 Mme. de Paiva's. — The jester in ordinary to the Court and the 
 jester who performs " by command." — The corps de ballet. — The 
 Paiva's, the Skittles, and the Cora Pearls. — Over-zealous officials. 
 — Paiva, Skittles and Cora Pearl delighted. — " Les femmes 
 comme il faut et les femmes comrae il en faut." — Horseflesh and 
 pigskin. — An afternoon in the Champs Elysees. — The Emperor, 
 the Empress, the Prince Imperial, the Court beauties. — The 
 beauties that were bred in alleys. — English Ambassadors. — 
 Lord Cowley and afterwards Lord Lyons. — An important foot- 
 note about the Prince Imperial Page 212 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 How Joshua, the Son of Nun, went to work. — The author adopts 
 his method for the nonce. — The Rahabs of the Second 
 Empire. — Alex. Dumas' preface to " Le Demi-Monde" quoted. 
 — The Emperor largely responsible for the corrupted state of 
 society. — Glimpses of Skittles and Cora Pearl. — The Vicomtesse 
 de Paiva. — A bit of biography. — Her spitefulness. — Smart 
 attaches make all this the subject of their correspondence. — 
 The result of this correspondence and that of the documents 
 and communications emanating from the Quai d'Orsay. — A 
 glance at Compiegne. — Warriors bold. — A prologue to the 
 Mexican Campaign Page 245 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Undercurrents of the war in Mexico.— Jecker and his claim against 
 the Mexican Government. — Did Napoleon III. engage in that 
 war for the sake of a prospective share in the claim ?— 
 "Distinctly not."— A suspected interview between Napoleon 
 and Jecker.— Morny and Jecker. — The prologue to the war in- 
 vented after the war itself had been decided on.— The deep- 
 seated religious dissatisfaction in France at the probable sequel 
 to the Franco-Austrian War as far as Rome was concerned. —
 
 n i i \ rs 
 
 ■ ■ , ordat. 
 
 . his un< le's universal 
 
 i to the latter's poli< y of < on- 
 
 ; of ( oni iliation 
 
 the part ol Napoleon III.; but 
 
 III. and the Archbishop ol 
 
 • • Church openly accused 
 
 . nd i laribaldi in en- 
 
 the Papal l the Papai y. — In 
 
 allov his officials 
 
 I . . :, rehi ■ I < lounod's 
 
 known letter from Napoleon III. to 
 
 What Napoleon I. 
 
 circumstances. — The spirit ol 
 
 phew. \\ i ak-kni irism and 
 
 i French the spectators of 
 
 Th( y for < onstant novelty at 
 
 i must do grandiose things." 
 
 to act upon the advice. — Notes of 
 
 Jealousy of the growing influence 
 
 Antagonism of some of her public men 
 
 i Bui hanan and reference to a 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and Juarez. — "The 
 
 their usual and admirable common 
 
 e of Commons and the Jecker claim. — 
 
 Moray's dealing with them. — Mexico 
 
 \krupt. — Lord John Russell and the Comte de 
 
 III.'s kn< of the iniquity of Jecker's 
 
 : 'rents in one. — The Jecker claim 
 
 ...in a pretext. — The offer of the crown of Mexico 
 
 tically a comedy. — Appendix . . Page2j$ 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ttle of Sadowa. — The Emperor, Metternich 
 n. — A sentence of the Emperor. — A sentence 
 ii e of Randon. — The three combined show- 
 nakedness of the Empire. — Four years 
 bcr it and will secretly advise his sovereign 
 :.- e with France. — The dearth of French 
 ■ at and incompetent French generals.- 
 i other. — Some stories in support. — The 
 know his best men. — He confers promotion 
 >hazard way. —Cleanliness and discipline. -The Cent
 
 CONTENTS xi 
 
 Gardes take a bath before going on duty. — The other troops do 
 not. — Pedantism. — The scheme for the thorough reorganisation 
 of the French army. The Exhibition of 1867 prevents, or at any 
 rate delays, its realisation. — I take a walk to see the prepara- 
 tions for the Exhibition. — France once more sacrificed to the 
 interests of Paris. — The scenery for the third act of " Sardana- 
 palus." — Arbaces and Belesis. — Rejoicings in the Republican 
 camp at the battle of Sadowa.— Opposition to the army scheme. 
 — " That damnable Exhibition." — The invitations to the feast. — 
 Joshua would have been equally glad to get such an invitation 
 from the kings of the land of Canaan. — A parterre of kings at 
 the Rue Le Peletier. — King Wilhelm, Bismarck, and Moltke in 
 Paris. — King Wilhelm's recollections of a former visit long ago. 
 — An excursion to Montmartre. — Bismarck at the review at 
 Longchamps. — A quotation from " Macbeth " . . . Page 315 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 The outbreak of the war. — Diplomacy. — Moral opinion of Europe. — 
 Is Prussia afraid ? — An interesting footnote. — The remodelling 
 of Europe on the basis previous to 18 14. — A glance at the 
 Quai d'Orsay. — Drouyn de Lhuys. — Duplicity of the Emperor. — 
 The Emperor too certain of the support of Austria. — Story of the 
 bandmasters. — Due Agenor de Gramont. — A heaven-born diplo- 
 matist. — Lord Granville on pseudo-heaven-born diplomatists. — 
 The Hohenzollern embroglio. — The diplomatic path of France 
 clearly mapped out. — Benedetti and the Prussian Minister for 
 Foreign Affairs (Herr von Thile). — Gramont, Benedetti and 
 Valette. — Desprets, the Permanent Secretary at the Quai 
 d'Orsay. — The Emperor very ill. — Benedetti's claims to the title 
 of a high-class diplomatist. — A story of Gouvion St. Cyr. — 
 The moral of the story. — The Luxemburg Affair. — Lack of dis- 
 cipline at the Quai d'Orsay. — The Emperor's foreign policy. — 
 An anecdote in a footnote. — Adolphe Thiers and my promised 
 indictment against him Page 341 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 Paris on the night of the 16th July, 1870. — My opinion about 
 France's ability to hold her own in the forthcoming struggle 
 undergoes a considerable change before bedtime. — My recollec- 
 tions of '59 in Paris and of '66 in Berlin. — A comparison forced 
 upon me. — Germany on the eve of the war, from a French eye-
 
 NTENTS 
 
 roup "i Imperialist . I 
 mania. There 
 
 i ran< e 
 
 tuation. Victor 
 
 willing. Frani foseph 
 
 ' . past in brdei to judge the 
 
 i onfideni e. Napoleon III.. 
 
 Lted pract illy. My reception at 
 
 i end Ktirnei and his troubles. — I tel' 
 
 oodwill between Austria 
 
 truth about the Emperor's illness. His 
 
 and her party.— Supposed 
 
 of health.— His departure. — 
 
 ti !.. Lebo ui" after Forbach and 
 
 im. The Empress's reply.— Fleury the 
 
 ived the situation. — The Empress 
 
 ; Ollivier. The- Empress's belief in tokens. — M. 
 
 His return to Paris. -The Emperor's second 
 
 The possible effect of his presence 
 
 hav< been saved by one resolute 
 
 elin in the Chamber. — Henpecked heroes. — 
 
 : IV.. Peter the Great. — Victor Emmanuel. — Mme. de 
 
 md the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. — 
 
 il one P&ge 373
 
 UNDERCURRENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Even before the fall of the Second Empire, 
 historians of high attainments like Lanfrey and 
 Taxile Delord were " whittling " the gigantic 
 figure of Napoleon I. They were probably 
 prompted by a desire similar to that which caused 
 Jacob to pill white strakes in the rods of green 
 poplar and hazel and chestnut tree in Laban's 
 field. With this difference, though, that Lanfrey 
 and Taine after him did not set the whittled Titan 
 before the mentally strongest progenitors of the 
 coming generations, but before the mentally 
 weakest. Lanfrey and Taine have had a kind of 
 reward, notably among French Republicans, 
 who have brought forth a generation which 
 keeps yelling that the Napoleonic gods are dead. 
 They, the French Republicans, remind one of the 
 early Christians who constantly cried out that the 
 Pagan gods were dead, when, in fact, these gods 
 were not dead at all, but simply made the 
 
 b
 
 :.! NTS 01 
 
 ::< w faith quake with tear. 
 not believe that 1 1 1 « ■ Napoleonic 
 
 ill- \ .ir<- \\ rapt in .1 deep sleep ; 
 
 ill ■-< e the man w iih the power to 
 :i is .mother question. 
 
 ncerning the present, let us look 
 
 .ii tl t, at the period between Waterloo 
 
 overthrow of the dynasty of Louis 
 
 . during which period the Napoleonic 
 
 i I ranee in particular, but to Europe 
 
 ral, what the stories of the Civil War and 
 
 i o-German Campaign are still, first to 
 
 ricans anil Germans respectively, then to the 
 
 whole ot the civilized world ; namely, a living, 
 
 omantic and heroic drama upon which 
 
 i urtain had only fallen a short time since ; 
 
 ima most of the actors of which still walked 
 
 earth, while its chief hero, like Abraham 
 
 Lincoln, was already numbered among the im- 
 
 ils of history, by reason of his martyrdom ; 
 
 a drama from the influence of which even those 
 
 who had most cause to dread and dispel that 
 
 aid not escape. I am quoting from 
 
 lory, but the reader may rest his mind on that 
 
 I : my memory rarely attempts to deceive 
 
 without arousing my suspicions to that effect. 
 
 \\<- have- lived for many years on the footing- of 
 
 N>us husband and wife ; the slightest sign of 
 
 on its part breeds a corresponding 
 
 i on mine, and in this instance I feel
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 3 
 
 absolutely convinced of its faithfulness. Both 
 
 Generals Cambronne and Drouot had followed 
 
 Napoleon during the Hundred Days ; the first 
 
 is credited with having flung a more forcible than 
 
 elegant monosyllable at his assailants at Waterloo 
 
 in reply to their summons to surrender ; the 
 
 second has had his name bestowed on one of the 
 
 principal streets in Paris. On their return, the 
 
 Bourbons after harassing Cambronne to no 
 
 purpose, conferred a title on him, and finally, I 
 
 believe, gave him the command of the Lille 
 
 division ; a frontier post of trust if ever there 
 
 was one. Drouot retired to his native city, 
 
 Nancy. Some time afterwards when the elder 
 
 son of Charles X. that was to be — the Due 
 
 d'Angouleme who in 1830 abdicated with his father 
 
 in favour of his nephew the Due de Bordeaux, 
 
 subsequently the Comte de Chambord — passed 
 
 through the capital of Lorraine, he immediately 
 
 inquired for the residence of Napoleon's favourite 
 
 general, and called upon him. " Monsieur le 
 
 General," said the Prince, " I have come to beg 
 
 a favour — that of exchanging my sword for yours." 
 
 Drouot acquiesced, and the son of the House of 
 
 France carried away the sword as a relic, as a 
 
 talisman, as a badge of honour. 
 
 A few years later, the Due's wife and cousin, 
 the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, 
 the erstwhile prisoner of the Temple, spent a 
 couple of days at Avignon, where at that time 
 
 b 2
 
 ENTS 01 
 
 tablishment of the I Idtel 
 
 Pari She stayed at the Pre- 
 
 :' Sunday, as a matter of course, 
 
 ricol in semi-state. Scarcely 
 
 • | touched the first step leading to the 
 
 n the air resounded with the stentorian 
 
 Vive rEmpereur!" Under the circum- 
 
 the cry was considered as nothing less 
 
 trage; the offender was apprehended 
 
 nd then, and would probably have been 
 
 to death on the spot, for the masses are 
 
 they an- not apes, and frequently both 
 
 I i offender would have been torn to 
 
 the men who seven years before had 
 
 ■ated a series of foul murders with that 
 
 hal Brune, would not have scrupled to 
 
 ries with another but for the inter- 
 
 -• of the I ►uchesse herself and the Prefect. 
 
 nder turned out to be a former sergeant 
 
 the Imperial Guard named Jean Boucard. 
 
 An interview took place the same afternoon 
 
 the veteran of la Grande Armee and the 
 
 Q leen of France at which no one 
 
 »ent but the Prefect, who afterwards told 
 
 ' ■ many of his friends among whom 
 
 me of my relath This story is, 
 
 long to be given in full here. For 
 
 it of those relatives and their influence upon 
 
 I must refer my readers to My Paris Notebook 
 
 lemann ; Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Co.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 5 
 
 the first time in her life perhaps the daughter of 
 the Bourbons found herself face to face with an 
 eye-witness of that marvellous Napoleonic era 
 and no considerations of courtly etiquette could 
 prevent him from limning it in all its brilliant, 
 glowing colours as well as in all its sombre and 
 tragic incidents, for Jean Boucard had been 
 rendered childless by the god he adored ; his 
 eldest son had been killed at Leipzig, his younger 
 at Waterloo. "Ah, you see, M. Boucard," said 
 the Princess when the veteran came to that part 
 of his story; "we cause the death of no one." 
 "Pardon me, Madame," interrupted Boucard, "you 
 had some one killed who was dearer to me than 
 both my sons ; you killed my general, my marshal, 
 you killed Michel Ney." In spite of this rough 
 reminder of the crime of her uncle (Louis XVIII.), 
 the Princess endeavoured to convert Jean Boucard 
 to the existing regime, nay, fancied she had con- 
 verted him, for he accepted a generous bounty for 
 himself and his widowed sister. But Boucard was 
 not converted, though he also construed his accept- 
 ance of the Princess's subsidy in that spirit, and 
 felt remorse gnawing at his heart in consequence. 
 He no longer held up his head, shunned his fellow 
 veterans, and from an occasional tippler became a 
 confirmed drunkard. During these drunken fits 
 he was silently arrogant, staring his former com- 
 rades in the face, evidently bent on provoking 
 them. On one occasion he told the Prefect that
 
 I la I RR] NTS 0] 
 
 i . .un the money that had been 
 
 by killing one of them. " The gold 
 
 I loodmarks of the murdered Michel 
 
 d : " I have tried to wash it clean in 
 
 ; onl) more Mood will do it." Time went 
 
 1 the birthday of I .ouis XVII I. came round. 
 
 I morning Boucard was more: helplessly 
 
 nk and more defiant than usual. He loudly 
 
 ed his intention of drinking the King's 
 
 alth at the dinner given on that occasion. He 
 
 •<>d as his word, but the " Vive le 
 
 stuck in his throat. Then with a supreme 
 
 "Vive I'Empereur," and dropped 
 
 When they picked him up he was 
 
 id. 
 
 I might fill a book with stories of the unalter- 
 yotion of these veterans to the memory 
 leader for whom they had shed their blood. 
 A few more must suffice. After his coronation, 
 Char!> s X. was about to enter the archbishop's 
 it Rheims when he noticed an old man, 
 ne arm. who stood quietly smoking his 
 profoundly indifferent to the ceremony which 
 I concluded, and not bestowine as much 
 on the newly-crowned king. Though 
 an wore no uniform, the martial air was 
 takable; it was moreover emphasized by the 
 of the limb. The sovereign stopped on 
 ' the palace and sent an aide-de- 
 ath 'tic veteran who came immedi-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 7 
 
 ately, with his pipe still alight in his hand. " That 
 pipe seems a great comfort to you, friend," said 
 the King, breaking the ice at once. " It is a com- 
 fort," replied the old soldier pointedly ; " it com- 
 pensates for many things." " Which means," 
 retorted the King, " that you are not too well- 
 pleased to-day ? " " I am aware, Sire," was the 
 instantaneous rejoinder, "that in Rheims to-day 
 every one is well pleased ; I, unfortunately, am 
 unable to take any share in the rejoicings." "And 
 why ?" queried the King. " Because I remember 
 too well another coronation, in which I took my 
 humble part." Charles X. was not easily discon- 
 certed ; he had a ready wit. " That's right," he 
 said ; "we should never forget those who led us 
 to victory. But why are you not at the Inva- 
 lides ? " "Because I prefer to eat my crust at 
 home in my own country. I am satisfied to live 
 on the pension my cross [of the Legion of Honour] 
 brings me." "The Invalides is your home by 
 right, it is not a question of charity," remarked 
 the King, still bent on conciliating the old soldier, 
 and bowing to him. The veteran stood at the 
 salute until Charles X. had disappeared, then 
 went back quietly to his sunny spot to re- 
 sume his smoking, mumbling to himself as 
 he went, " He is a good sort after all." 
 An hour later, an aide-de-camp dispatched 
 by the King found him there. " His Majesty 
 has sent me to tell you that he has granted
 
 ■1 RCl RREN L'S 01 
 
 on of 300 francs from his privy 
 
 said the officer. Jean Latapie (for that 
 
 ins name) stood at the salute once more. 
 
 y well," he remarked, with a somewhat sar- 
 
 smite, " Please to thank His Majesty for 
 
 . ami to tell him that his kindness will enable 
 
 bu) two new ribbons instead of one ribbon 
 
 for the cross given to me by the Em- 
 
 mds of these veterans were scattered 
 
 1 rench provinces, for Jean Latapie 
 
 not singular in his preference for a crust at 
 
 two good meals daily at the Invalides. 
 
 propagated the Napoleonic faith and em- 
 
 I the Napoleonic legend, in spite of their 
 
 ol them, at any rate, republicans at 
 
 tit. "I weep," said one, "because Napoleon 
 
 taken the Republic from us to smother it 
 
 imperial bed; I weep because he who 
 
 forted us for the loss of the Republic, is 
 
 ained to an English rock." They despised the 
 
 isty that had been imposed upon France by 
 
 tid of alien bayonets. When Louvel stood 
 
 arraigned for the murder of the Due de Berri, 
 
 rator-General flung the word " coward " 
 
 lly into his face. "Coward, coward," 
 
 I Louvel at last ; " you do not know, Monsieur, 
 
 much courage it implies to kill a man who 
 
 never done you any harm." And when 
 
 to state the motives that had made him
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 9 
 
 commit the deed, he exclaimed: "Since the iSth 
 June, 18 1 5, / have never ceased to hear the cannon 
 of Waterloo T 
 
 I made a mistake just now when I said that 
 these veterans embellished the Napoleonic legend; 
 they did not embellish it, there was no need 
 to do so : they had but to tell the unvar- 
 nished truth about that giant who in a few 
 years transformed the whole of the political 
 geography of the European continent ; who made 
 a King of Sweden out of a lawyer's son like him- 
 self ; a King of Naples out of an innkeeper's son ; 
 a score of dukes and marshals out of as many 
 stable-lads, millers' boys, coopers' apprentices, and 
 Heaven alone knows out of what else. The rise 
 of David and that of Joseph, as told in the Bible, 
 are as nothing to that sudden leap into fortune of 
 that lank-haired, sallow-faced Corsican lieutenant 
 of artillery who, four years before the whole of the 
 world rano- with his name, was almost unknown to 
 his brother officers. And when some sergeant, like 
 Boucard or Latapie, told these marvellous tales 
 and at their conclusion asked, in imitation of Ser- 
 geant Goguelat of Balzac's Medccin de Campagne, 
 "Do you think that all this was natural?" the 
 simple listeners sitting in the ingle-nook could but 
 reply, " No, it was not natural." And the hero of 
 the tales, " Le Petit Caporal," became a god in 
 the imagination of those humble folks to whom for 
 nearly two decades he had proved a scourge by
 
 I MM Kt IKKI NTS "I 
 
 m their husbands, fathers, brothers, 
 
 humble folks who suffered 
 
 m th<- two invasions, for let us bear in 
 
 the Napoleonic cult was ever much 
 
 in the rural than in the urban districts. 
 
 tion of that fact will stand us in good 
 
 . and by, when we shall have to watch the 
 
 if the giant " spiking " the ground for his 
 
 5 in the Presidential elections, when we shall 
 
 him fight the Ulm of his electoral Austerlitz. 
 
 r must it be thought that the propagation of 
 
 Napoleonic cult was confined only to those 
 
 nded the cult by the power of their 
 
 ■—the surviving legionaries of the Grande 
 
 Armee. Shortly after the sword had been sheathed 
 
 in its work, and before long - , nay, even 
 
 martyr of St. Helena" had breathed 
 
 the glory of the victors of Waterloo had 
 
 I before that of the vanquished, for those 
 
 led the pen were poets, to whom a 
 
 1 11, a Frederick the Great, or a Bonaparte 
 
 G 1 or Satan, sometimes both in one, 
 
 ho attempted, if they did not always 
 
 mplish a " Paradise Lost," when they became 
 
 inspired with the deeds of an immortal " clothed 
 
 with mortal flesh." They were poets, not literary 
 
 I 'wens, whose system admits not 
 
 of h( r criminals, but simply of vertebrate 
 
 or invertebrate animals. Considerable though 
 
 at my disposal may be, I cannot
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE n 
 
 dwell at greater length on this apotheosis of 
 Napoleon by Byron, Goethe, Heine, Hugo, 
 Mickiewicz, and their satellites ; one ought to 
 have heard a Dumas — whose father suffered at 
 the hands of Napoleon — and a Beranger speak of 
 the modern Caesar, as I have heard them speak 
 at my uncles' home, to be able to judge of the 
 effect of their words, especially upon the younger 
 generation of that period. Hence, as early as 
 1830, during the Revolution that cost the elder 
 Bourbons their throne, there was already an 
 attempt to restore the Empire. I can give 
 chapter and verse for what I state. Talleyrand 
 went to Vienna in secret, and but for the opposition 
 there, would have brought the Due de Reichstadt 
 (the King of Rome) to Paris. Louis Philippe 
 owed Talleyrand nothing with regard to the 
 crown which for eighteen years " rested " so un- 
 easily on his head, and he was well aware of the 
 absence of all obligation. Nay, it is extremely 
 doubtful whether Louis Philippe, who was one 
 of the cleverest men on record, was not perfectly 
 cognisant of his inability to struggle against the 
 ever growing influence of the Napoleonic legend, 
 especially after the death of his eldest son and 
 notwithstanding the fact that this legend was 
 frequently sung to the tunes of the " Marseillaise " 
 and " Le Chant du Depart " rather than to that of 
 " Partant pour la Syrie." He knew that Napoleon 
 during the Hundred Days had allowed his soldiers
 
 i mm RCT RR] N rs 01 
 
 - the revolutionary hymn attributed to 
 I'lsle, just .is Napoleon's nephew 
 the military bands play it "by order" 
 the month of July iS;o. He knew, 
 r, that the most formidable successor of 
 Talleyrand 1 am alluding to Thiers — would not 
 scruple to use the lever of Imperialism to attain 
 >wn ends ; he knew that he himself had con- 
 tributed to the spread of the Napoleonic faith by 
 v.il of the remains of Napoleon from St. 
 na to P. iris. Smne one who knew it even 
 r than he was Prince Louis Napoleon. 
 I repeat, Louis Napoleon knew all this even 
 r than Louis Philippe. Of the various 
 ibers of the Bonaparte family, he alone 
 followed step by step the evolution of 
 Napoleonic legend, not only in its effects 
 herself, but on England and Russia, 
 whence, in the beginning, he foresaw the 
 sition to his action when he 
 mould deem the time for action ripe. He 
 had acted on two distinct occasions, 
 lis relatives had looked on indifferently; 
 notably Jerome, the ex-King of 
 tphalia, and his son, who will be known to 
 Plon-Plon, applauding most prob- 
 ably in their hearts of hearts at his failures; 
 ike Joseph, constantly advising him, 
 •ally after Strasburg, to abstain from all 
 furth' r attempts. I have chapter and verse for
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 13 
 
 everything I state here and throughout this 
 volume, and this time I am not at all inclined to 
 submit tamely to criticism from so-called eminent 
 personages who know no more of the secret 
 history of the heirs to the Napoleonic legend than 
 the man in the moon. Jerome and his son were 
 probably inclined to regret that these failures 
 had not led to a more fatal issue so far as 
 Louis Napoleon himself was concerned, albeit 
 that his success then would have given them 
 the material prosperity and exalted position 
 which they so undeservedly and greedily enjoyed 
 during the Second Empire, for which they 
 clamoured incessantly, and for which they began 
 to clamour before Louis Napoleon was fairly 
 seated in the Presidential chair. " You have 
 nothing of your uncle about you," said ex-King 
 Jerome one day, huffed at his nephew's refusal 
 of his constant demands for money. " Yes, I 
 have," was the Prince-President's answer, " I 
 have my uncle's family." But Louis Napoleon 
 was not the man to refuse money to any one, pro- 
 vided he had it or could borrow it ; yet, notwith- 
 standing his generosity to them as well as to 
 others, the two Jeromes (father and son), would 
 have almost rejoiced at the frustration of his 
 hopes, for their dislike of him — let us say their 
 jealousy — was even stronger than their greed. 
 There could be no doubt with regard to Louis 
 Napoleon's right to the succession of his uncle's
 
 ERCURRENTS O] 
 
 fter thi di ath of the I >uc de Reichstadt 
 
 Napoleon's two elder brothers. 
 
 distinct wishes on the subject, em- 
 
 ( Constitution of the Empire, left not 
 
 smallest loophole for misconstruction ; never- 
 
 in virtue of Napoleon's former dispositions, 
 
 were afterwards revoked and with very 
 
 . apart from the claims of primogeni- 
 
 Jerdme never ceased to consider himself as 
 
 I, as having been despoiled of the Im- 
 
 al inheritance, and to a great extent imbued 
 
 sun with the same ideas. As we proceed we 
 
 shall see the effect produced by these ideas in 
 
 lon-Plon's attitude towards his cousin during the 
 
 r's occupancy of the Imperial throne. 
 
 all the brothers of Napoleon, the younger 
 
 doubtlessly the least worthy ; there is equally 
 
 t that in spite of Napoleon's knowledge 
 
 oi that worthlessness, his affection for him was 
 
 stronger than that for any other member of his 
 
 family, except, perhaps, for his sister Pauline. On 
 
 this theory alone can one account for Napoleon's 
 
 ♦ rror in making Jerome King of Westphalia. 
 
 he who knew the working of men's hearts 
 
 almost as well as Shakespeare, though he lacked 
 
 y wherewith to describe these workings, 
 
 not lor one moment have flattered himself 
 
 contact of this utterly feather-brained 
 
 void of the slightest idea of moral 
 
 risibility, with the sober-minded, honest,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 15 
 
 though heavy Brunswickers, Hanoverians, and 
 Hessians could be productive of the slightest 
 good. And, as a matter of course, Jerome im- 
 paired the prestige of his brother, and proved a 
 thorn in his side during the whole of his 
 (Napoleon's) reign, just as Jerome's son impaired 
 the prestige of his cousin and proved a thorn in 
 his side during the whole of the Second Empire. 
 With this difference, however, that the son was 
 even more guilty than the father ; for the latter 
 had not an ounce of his offspring's brain, while on 
 the other hand the son had not a grain of his 
 sire's courage, which was that of the lion. 
 
 But even in the days of Napoleon, courage, 
 though counting for much, did not make up for 
 everything, especially with the ruler of popula- 
 tions already exhausted by war. I hold no brief 
 either for the memory of Napoleon I. or for that 
 of Napoleon III. I am fully aware that the war 
 contributions levied by the former were often very 
 terrible ; at the same time the very poor were not 
 systematically ground down. Edgar Ouinet, who 
 assuredly is not suspected of a leaning towards 
 Caesarism, tells us that in the humbler dwellings 
 in Spain, crude representations of the Emperor and 
 of the principal events in his life hung side by side 
 with the presentment of the Cid. In Russia the 
 Napoleonic songs of Beranger were translated and 
 became popularwith the masses. The Count Lepic, 
 travelling in Egypt, came at every step on "grate-
 
 m RCl RREN rS 01 
 ' of the "great Kebir," " who only 
 
 whom the people called " the 
 
 most magnificent title the Aral) can be- 
 After the fall of the Empire, the gondoliers 
 ■ \ ice refused to carry Marmont, and pointed 
 • rer of scorn at him. " Do you see this 
 they cried to one another. "Well, he was 
 nd <>\ the great Napoleon, and betrayed 
 I fancy one might £0 from one end to 
 other of the former kingdom of Westphalia 
 without finding the faintest trace of such good- 
 will to the memory of Napoleon's brother, and 
 I am not speaking of the present time, but ot 
 than thirty years ago. On the day of the 
 of Westphalia's funeral, I happened 
 prain my ankle and was taken home by 
 an old German gentleman who was a native of 
 1 el, and by his grandson who was a Parisian 
 by birth. The elder Korner's stories about 
 the Court of King Jerome caused my grand- 
 uncles to take a great fancy to him, and he 
 and his grandson became frequent guests at 
 our Those who have read My Paris 
 
 are aware by this time of my 
 relatives' mania for "taking notes," a mania 
 which I have inherited. It is from their papers 
 that I cull the following stories, only a few 
 among nearly two hundred. 
 
 Among the various individuals who followed 
 and accompanied Jerome to Cassel — some clever,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 17 
 
 others hopelessly incapable, but all tainted with 
 the same greed — there was a former captain of 
 engineers by name Morio, who had been one 
 of Jerome's aide-de-camps during his successful 
 campaign in Silesia (1807). Morio was not devoid 
 of courage or knowledge, but he was a " muddler," 
 and a pretentious one at that, with a hankering 
 for reforming things, and a "money-grabber" be- 
 sides. Jerome made him his War Minister, and 
 Morio, who saw his subordinates grow fat on the 
 moneys extorted from the Westphalians under 
 the then prevailing system of " substituting " for 
 "military service," began to rack his brain for a 
 reform that would likewise fill his purse. He 
 issued an order that henceforth all officers should 
 pay for their horses' fodder, intending of course to 
 charge the War Chest — empty enough in all con- 
 science — with the cost of said fodder and pocket- 
 ing the proceeds. Most of the officers complied 
 with the new regulations ; a few proved absolutely 
 refractory ; among the latter General Allix, an 
 able and meritorious officer whom Napoleon had 
 sent to look after his brother's artillery. Shortly 
 after this there was a grand field-day in pres- 
 ence of the young sovereign, who, to his in- 
 tense astonishment, beheld General Allix trudg- 
 ing on foot behind his batteries. "Why are 
 you not on horseback, general?" shouts Je- 
 rome. " Because I cannot afford to pay for 
 my catties' fodder, and the State, it appears, 
 
 c
 
 ,8 l NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 cannot afford it either," shouts the other in 
 reply, panting for breath and trying to keep up 
 
 with his nun. This was long before Herve had 
 written his Petit Faust, in which Valentine 
 recommends his foot-soldiers " not to forget that 
 they arc on horseback." Jerdme, therefore, simply 
 lent the general a mount there and then, and 
 
 inded Morio's orders. General Allix's victory 
 in this instance had apparently no effect on his 
 outspokenness. A couple of days later Jerome 
 paid a visit of inspection to the Cassel arsenal. 
 Catching sight of several obsolete pieces of 
 ordnance in an angle, the King remarked, 
 "General Allix, your guns are rather rusty.'" 
 " Parbleu, Sire," was the immediate answer : 
 " they are not intended for court carriages." 
 
 It was an indirect reminder to Jerome that 
 " show " in military matters, and especially in sober 
 matters of war, was out of place, and Jerome 
 
 led such a reminder, for notwithstanding his 
 undoubted courage and by no means inconsider- 
 able tactical skill, he was too much addicted to the 
 theatrical display with which the Bourbons pre- 
 viously to the Napoleonic era conducted their 
 campaigns. The campaign in Silesia, which I men- 
 tioned just now incidentally, had been an instance 
 of it, and he was not a crowned sovereign then. 
 I n the one undertaken after his coronation, by order 
 of his brother, who was already preparing the 
 ground for Wagram, he might have been a veritable
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 19 
 
 Louis XIV. or Louis XV., accompanied as he 
 was by his ministers, the foreign ambassadors, his 
 mistresses, a company of play actors, scullions 
 and so forth. To the Blanche Cameras and her 
 fellow concubines, as well as to their husbands, he 
 distributed titles, distinctions, money, and estates 
 with lavish hand. In this respect he differed 
 from his son in after years, for liberality, no 
 matter in what form, was not one of Plon- 
 Plon's pet sins. 
 
 Both father and son had been residing in 
 France for over a twelvemonth by favour of 
 Louis Philippe when the Revolution of 1848 
 broke out. In after years when the would-be 
 historians hinted that Louis Napoleon had played 
 his cards well by selecting his uncle and cousin to 
 watch events for him, he invariably smiled with 
 that sphinx-like smile which might be construed 
 into anything the interlocutor chose. Well 
 might the Emperor smile at the idea of having 
 derived help from these two. Bismarck said once 
 that too much stress had been laid upon Napoleon 
 III.'s intellectual capacities and not sufficient 
 stress upon his generous and lovable disposition. 
 The erstwhile chancellor was not far wrong, but 
 Napoleon III., though not an eagle, was not an 
 imbecile, and to have expected the two Jeromes 
 to help him would have shown him to be a 
 hopeless one. 
 
 After his escape from Ham and until the 
 
 c 2
 
 I MM RCURREN rS 01 
 
 i '.|S. the greater part ol which time 
 I Napoleon spent in England, he had but 
 
 alh or, to speak by the card, a faithful 
 her of his fortunes among the members oi 
 .nil\ whether legitimate or illegitimate ; and 
 that friend was a woman, his cousin Mathilde 
 the daughter of ex-King J6r6me. Prince Louis 
 had forfeited the countenance of the rest, in con- 
 sequence n( his social mistakes, as well as political 
 blunders. Morny never saw his half-brother 
 until the latter had weathered the storm of 
 Presidential elections. There is no trust- 
 worthy evidence that they ever as much as 
 corresponded before then. Morny was an 
 ( )rl<anist. and if the truth were known, had no 
 exalted idea of Prince Louis's capacities ; Colonna 
 Walewski, the illegitimate son of Napoleon I., 
 was to a certain extent affiliated to Thiers, and 
 Thiers's views with regard to the game he meant 
 the exiled Prince to play in the immediate 
 future, if the opportunity should occur, were, I 
 feel perfectly certain, never communicated to 
 Walewski. I can but faintly touch here on the 
 latt<r and Morny ; they will appear again, and 
 the reader may rest assured that then I will 
 not skimp their portraits. Prince Louis's 
 cousins on the father's side, the family of 
 Lucien, were too occupied with their own affairs 
 to bestow much thought on him ; his cousins 
 on the- mother's side, the posterity of Eugene de
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 21 
 
 Beauharnais, were allied by marriage to some of 
 the reigning Houses of Germany and to Czar 
 Nicholas himself, whom the rumblings of the 
 revolutionary storm which was to break all over 
 the continent of Europe filled with rage, while 
 they filled the others with fear ; and it must not be 
 forgotten that Prince Louis had the reputation 
 then of being an ardent republican, a reputation 
 perfectly justified. Besides, all these, in common 
 with Morny, were not far short of considering him 
 a hare-brained dreamer and — his private life did 
 not meet with their approval. That private life can- 
 not be sketched here ; we shall get glimpses of it 
 as we proceed, when, though seated on the throne, 
 he paid the penalty for some of its errors, and 
 paid right nobly. Worse than all from their point 
 of view, Prince Louis was poor, and, to aggra- 
 vate matters, not always careful to husband his 
 poverty. He was prone to dissipation, addicted 
 to gambling, and not always punctual in the pay- 
 ment of his debts. " Je vous revaudrai ca un jour. :v 
 said Gambetta, in acknowledgment of any favour in 
 the days of his impecuniosity. I am not certain 
 that he kept his word when prosperity came. Louis 
 Napoleon, who had a similar way of giving his 
 friends liens on the future, never broke his, except 
 in one instance, and that instance is sufficiently 
 amusing to be recounted here, especially as it 
 will afford the reader at least one glimpse of 
 that private life to which I alluded just now.
 
 •1 RCURR] N rS 01 
 
 [t \\.i-> in the summer of 60 or '61 that I went 
 
 time if Baden-Baden in compan) 
 
 m) two grand-uncles, among whose acquaint- 
 
 W .ill sorts and conditions of men. My 
 relatives were talking to a M. Martin, .1 super- 
 annuated of Frascati in Paris, who had 
 appointed inspector oi the gaming tallies 
 under the late Francois Blanc, of Monte Carlo 
 tame. We were standing on the steps of the 
 [, a lad of seventeen, but a precocious 
 one. keeping my eyes and cars wide open for 
 ything that was said and done. It is well 
 known that the late Wilhelm I. of Prussia, before 
 icceeded to his brother's throne, had several 
 interviews with Napoleon III. at the fashionable 
 rt, mainly through the instrumentality of Bis- 
 marck. On that day the Emperor was at Baden- 
 n, and Prince Wilhelm and he were to meet 
 in the Lichtenthall Allee. As a matter of course, 
 the majority of the visitors were flocking thither. 
 •• Aren't you going to the Lichthenthall Allee, Mar- 
 tin ? " asked my uncle. The old croupier shrugged 
 houlders. " The sight of Prince Guillaume is 
 no novelty to us. He comes pretty well every 
 ir." ' True ; but what about Emperor Napo- 
 " Emperor Napoleon," quoth Martin, 
 pondering as it were, " I saw the first one when 
 s a lad. This one is the third son of Queen 
 Hortense, the one who used to travel about a 
 good deal. If I am not mistaken . . . ."' — "You
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 23 
 
 are not mistaken, Martin," came a voice from 
 behind us. " He still owes twenty-five louts to 
 the Bank." I looked round and saw a thin, 
 shrivelled, old man, below rather than above 
 the middle height ; it was the famous Francois 
 Blanc. 
 
 If one of the Emperor's relatives had been near 
 at the time, he or she would have smiled at the 
 recollection of such a shady passage in the life 
 of the man who at that very moment was virtually 
 the arbiter of the destinies of Europe, and have 
 offered to pay the money there and then ; but 
 thirteen or fourteen years before that moment 
 Blanc's sally would have roused his or her vir- 
 tuous indignation. Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte, 
 Comtesse Demidoff, was no such time-server. 
 To begin with, her own chequered existence 
 had bred a larQfe-minded tolerance for the foibles 
 of men ; no one had suffered more from such foibles 
 then she, for her husband, Comte Anatole Demi- 
 doff, had the most marvellous and complete 
 collection of them, and was little short of a 
 madman besides. She knew, moreover, that her 
 cousin Louis was not half nor a quarter as mad 
 as her husband and the male members of his 
 family, and that he had all the generous im- 
 pulses of the Demidoffs. Thirdly, if Louis 
 Napoleon had been the veriest raving maniac, 
 she would have still clung to his fortunes, and
 
 I \l»l RCURREN rS I 'I 
 
 I them to the utmost ol her abilitie - and 
 • >;• she acknov led; fed but one god, her 
 treat Napoleon, and she could then 
 : no other prophet than her cousin, 
 >n of Louis, ex-King of Holland and 
 tense de Beauharnais. "Call a dog Bona- 
 . and 1 will love him"; she might have 
 said, paraphrasing Johnson. In that respect she 
 was the daughter of her mother, that heroic 
 Catherine of Wurtemberg, of whom Napoleon 
 spoke with such admiration till the day of his 
 death; she loved the name of Napoleon for the 
 of the halo with which it was surrounded, 
 not for the material gain it might bring. It was 
 that tervent, disinterested love for Napoleon I. 
 that won her the heart of Nicholas I., who, in 
 spite of his real or fancied grievance against him, 
 worshipped him as fervently as she did, and virtu- 
 ally freed her from the marriage bonds she had 
 contracted with one of his nobles, as much for the 
 sake of Napoleon's memory as from respect for 
 This grievance was not due to Moscow or to 
 Napoleon's European policy, but to Napoleon's 
 somewhat offensive rejection of Nicholas's sister, 
 Anna I'aulowna, who became the wife of William 
 II. ot Holland. In principle Napoleon, who 
 divorced Josephine because he wanted an heir, 
 and as a matter of course, a physically and 
 mentally sound heir, was right at the moment of
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 25 
 
 that rejection, apart from the proposed bride's 
 youth. Subsequent events do not absolutely prove 
 that Napoleon was wrong in his rejection, for 
 though William III. of Holland and his brothers 
 and sisters were as physically and mentally 
 sound as any one, the same could not be said 
 for the descendants of William III. ; I mean for 
 those who are dead. However, the goodwill of 
 Nicholas, as we shall see presently, only extended 
 to one member of the Bonaparte family ; on 
 personal as well as political grounds he objected 
 in toto to "that lank-haired adventurer, the son of 
 the devil knows whom, and the devil's firebrand- 
 envoy." It was another illustration of the pot 
 calling the kettle black, for Nicholas himself was 
 the grandson of " the devil knows whom" ; it is 
 very certain that his grandmother, the great 
 Catherine, could not have told him with certainty 
 who was the responsible author of his (Nicholas's) 
 father's being. 
 
 To Mathilde Bonaparte all these contemptuous 
 epithets, flung at her cousin's head, were as 
 nothing, especially after Prince Louis's attempt 
 at Strasburg, more especially after his attempt at 
 Boulogne, and still more especially after his es- 
 cape from Ham. Princesse Mathilde is a septua- 
 genarian, and, as far as I know, a hale and hearty 
 one. The time to write her full biography is, let 
 us trust, far distant ; when that time comes the
 
 I mm RCURPJ \ rs OF 
 
 ill ha\ e to add her name to those oi 
 de Berri (the Comte de < )ham- 
 Princesse Adelaide ( 1 ,ouis Phi- 
 r), and Queen Hortense of Holland, 
 ne * > t the tour women who have shaped t<> a 
 tin extent the history of France during the 
 teenth century. For the present I must con- 
 fine myself to a preliminary statement. It was 
 who kept her cousin informed of the progress 
 of the Napoleonic legend after Strasburg and after 
 • ■ ■ ; it was she who inspired him with cou- 
 by giving him the real reasons why those 
 attempts had not been more rigorously visited on 
 the participators in it, especially on the officers of 
 the 46th of the line and the artillery troops of 
 nel Vaudrey. It was she who repeated to him 
 the answer " II y aurait eu tropapunir." of the Due 
 the father of the late Comte de Paris) 
 to Colonel Taillandier, who had stemmed the tide 
 ol the insurrection at Strasburg, and who asked 
 the Due the question. It was she who bade her 
 in humour or blindfold Lamartine when 
 the latter in .March '48 asked the former to return 
 to London. It was she who supplied part of the 
 sinews of war for the Presidential elections when 
 ousin did return ; it was she who coached him 
 in that game of political bluff with Victor Hugo, 
 and Changarnier and Thiers after he, Prince 
 Louis, had been elected President ; it was she who
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 27 
 
 kept Dupin Aine in good humour, so that he 
 might signal to the future Emperor the cards 
 held by his adversaries, only one of whom, Thiers, 
 was formidable. The description of that game 
 must be left for my next chapter.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 In the previous chapter I spoke of Princesse 
 Mathilde as the prompter of Louis Napoleon 
 re and after his election as President of the 
 nd Republic. At the first blush this ad- 
 ion may appear a contradiction of my equally 
 former statement to the effect that the future 
 Emperor was thoroughly aware of the magic 
 ntiality contained in the name of Napoleon. 
 But no actor, whether great or small, and how- 
 letter-perfect and certain of his audience 
 can afford to dispense with a prompter, for. 
 known or unknown to the player, there may slip 
 in among that audience a section hostile to him 
 and Lent upon "queering his pitch." The ex- 
 is not elegant, but it is the appropriate 
 theatrical authorities well know. That 
 on, numerous or the reverse, may work 
 join: parately. It may post its members 
 
 singly in different parts of the house or gather 
 into a serried phalanx as was done during
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF THE SECOND EMPIRE. 29 
 
 the "Tamburini Rows" at Her Majesty's Theatre 
 more than fifty years ago. 1 It may express its 
 hostility openly by hisses and catcalls, or by 
 pretended and exaggerated marks of approval 
 and sympathy. The latter device is popularly 
 called ''guying." Nay, more; it may enlist in 
 its cause a fellow-actor of the comedian to 
 hamper him on the very stage. 
 
 To continue the theatrical metaphor for another 
 moment. The members of that " omnibus-box." 
 or to use the French term " loge infernale" who 
 had determined to " queer Louis Napoleon's 
 pitch " either in furtherance of their own and 
 strictly personal aggrandisement or for the 
 purpose of showing what an inferior "mummer" 
 he, Louis Napoleon, was in comparison with the 
 great classical actors they had selected for the 
 part of rulers of the French, these members 
 all adopted the tactics enumerated just now. 
 Among them, Lamartine is the only one entitled 
 to a certain amount — a very small amount — of 
 respect. He, at any rate, fought Louis Napoleon 
 with uplifted visor, and would fain have avoided 
 fighting altogether. The consciousness that his 
 motive for fighting was not a lofty one may have 
 
 1 A word to the wise. The " Tamburini Rows " have been 
 immortalised by Barham in the Ingoldsby Legends. But I cannot 
 explain every allusion I may have occasion to use in the course of 
 these pages. Many years ago I wrote in a preface to one of my 
 books, " The writer who has time to explain everything has not 
 much to write. The reader who is too indolent or indifferent to 
 look up references ought not to read." I hold that opinion still.
 
 UND] RCURREN rs OF 
 
 . reluctance, for the poet historian oi Les 
 s had not the invincible conviction oi 
 nfallibilit) in all things of the poet-pamph- 
 of UHistoire cCun Crime, nor the 
 facility for blinking unsavoury tacts connected 
 las own ambition of the historian of 
 i ulate and the Empire. Lamartine 
 wa^ more honest and more honourable than 
 cither Victor Hugo, or Adolphe Thiers, though 
 that is not saying much. Joseph Mery, the 
 ■I of the elder Dumas and Balzac, the genial, 
 amusing, and almost matchless humourist, who 
 : - scarcely known to English and American 
 rs, but who ought to be known to every 
 Mt'rv, who rarely said an unkind word of any 
 one, openly averred that Lamartine proclaimed 
 the Second Republic on the 24th February, 
 1S4S. as a means to stave off his most pressing 
 creditors. Lamartine's subsequent explanation 
 of his action on that day virtually substantiated 
 M <'ty's indictment, for the poet admitted that at 
 noon on that historical Thursday "the establish- 
 ment of a republic was farthest from his 
 thoughts.'' But if he forsook his royalist faith, 
 is in no way pledged by any of his previous 
 utterances either to Bonapartism in its osten- 
 tatiously republican form as advocated by the 
 "nephew of his uncle,'"' or to republicanism in its 
 Carsaric form as interpreted by the " uncle of the 
 nephew." Unlike Goethe, Heine, Byron, Hugo,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 31 
 
 and the rest, Lamartine had never worshipped at 
 the shrine of the deified Corsican lieutenant of 
 artillery ; he had endeavoured, though unsuccess- 
 fully, to drag down the idol and impose silence 
 on its high priests by that one scathing line — 
 
 Rien d'humain ne battait sous son epaisse armure ; 
 
 he had opposed the removal of Napoleon's 
 remains from St. Helena and their triumphal 
 reception in Paris, and when defeated, his cry of 
 surrender had been, as it were, prophetic. ' Very 
 well," he exclaimed, " bring back his remains, con- 
 sidering that nothing less will satisfy you. Let 
 the pedestal to his statue be the column ; x after 
 all, the work is his, the monument created by 
 him, but at any rate, do this : write on the socle, 
 ' To Napoleon Alone.' 
 
 Thus, nearly a score of years before the coup 
 d'dtat, Lamartine saw and felt whence and 
 whither the wind blew. At that very moment 
 the son of the great Napoleon was dying at 
 Schoenbrunn ; the second son of the great 
 Napoleon's brother and Hortense de Beauharnais 
 had died a twelvemonth before without issue. The 
 least dangerous enemies to the welfare of France 
 — from Lamartine's point of view — and also the 
 least enterprising were gone ; the most daring — 
 
 1 The Austerlitz column, better, though wrongly, known as the 
 Vendome column, whence the statue had been removed in 1814 
 after the entry of the Allied Troops in Paris. Lamartine's speech 
 dates from 1832, when it was proposed to reinstate the statue.
 
 I \i-i k< I RR] NTS 01 
 
 and the third son remained, and 
 
 nan guessed, if he did not ab- 
 
 know, their temper. Louis Napoleon's 
 
 .it Str.isl.ur-- four years later (1836), his 
 
 rid attempt at Boulogne-sur-Mer four years 
 
 that • and his writings during 
 
 subsequent confinement at Ham could 
 
 left no doubt in Lamartine's mind with 
 
 rd to Louis Napoleon's further plans; and 
 
 Lamartine's first thought and care when the hour 
 
 cution of these plans had obviously 
 
 struck, was their frustration. On the 2nd March, 
 
 Louis Napoleon and Lamartine met in 
 
 t : and the poet prevailed on the prince 
 
 turn to England. Few of the real particulars 
 
 of that interview, and of the arguments employed 
 
 by Lamartine to induce Louis Napoleon to this 
 
 ver leaked out; I may honestly claim 
 
 to possess some slight information on the subject 
 
 to others. Truly, that information is open 
 
 he charge of being one-sided, considering 
 
 • it was gathered from the lips of the Emperor 
 
 . couple of years after his accession, 
 
 at which time a national subscription was set 
 
 to relieve Lamartine of his debts, to which 
 
 fund the Emperor contributed a handsome sum. 
 
 • It he were the merest rhymester instead of 
 
 t the greatest poets of contemporary 
 
 I should still owe him that much," re- 
 
 marked Napoleon III. during one of those
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 33 
 
 occasional conversations with my relatives to 
 which I have alluded elsewhere. 1 " I owe him 
 that much for his treatment of me in March 
 1848. Neither Thiers nor Changarnier and least 
 of all Cavaignac would have acted like that had 
 they been in Lamartine's position. I feel certain 
 they would not have counselled me to return to 
 England, but opposed that return with all their 
 might when once they had me in their power, 
 for I was virtually setting at defiance the 
 decree of banishment against our family which 
 had only been specially relaxed in favour of my 
 uncle Jerome and his children — a proof by the 
 bye that Louis Philippe was not afraid of them 
 and that he was afraid of me, so I could not have 
 been the utter nonentity people said I was. I 
 should not like to say for certain what Thiers 
 or Changarnier would have done with me, though 
 I have a pretty correct idea ; as for Cavaignac, 
 he would have had me shot as, I am sorry to 
 say, my uncle had the Due d'Enghien shot ; that 
 is, without the formality of a trial. Republican 
 though he professed to be, he had all the making 
 of an irresponsible tyrant in him ; republican 
 though he was, he would not have scrupled 
 to pose as a kind of avenger of the son of the 
 Due de Conde, and what is more, the people would 
 have let him do it, even if he had condescended to 
 apprise them of his intention ; they would probably 
 
 1 My Paris Note-Book. 
 
 D
 
 I MM k< I KKI NTS 0] 
 
 applauded it' they had only been told of 
 die accomplished fact ; mainly, because the 
 masses arc prone to applaud accomplished facts, 
 or at am rate to acquiesce in them, provided they 
 mplished boldly and promptly. If Louis 
 XVI. had had the Tennis Court at Versailles 
 surrounded and shelled instead of letting the 
 eedings take their course, there would have 
 
 no Revolution. Again, Cavaignac, if he 
 had deigned to give a reason at all for thus 
 ising of me so unceremoniously could have 
 given an apparently valid one. He could have 
 represented me as having come to overthrow the 
 new-born Republic, not of having come with the in- 
 tention of serving it as a French citizen. He might 
 
 been correct or not in his assertion, that 
 is not the question. The people would have 
 acquiesced, for it is a lie to say that the people 
 side with the weaker; they side with the stronger, 
 and during the first days of March 1848, it was 
 not only the people but the populace that had 
 the upper hand, not the bourgeoisie as in 1830, 
 although the people in 1848 allowed themselves 
 to be hoodwinked by a set of the meanest and 
 most contemptible bourgeois that ever lived. To 
 this wholesale statement there are only two ex- 
 emptions, Lamartine and Emile de Girardin, both 
 of whom thoroughly despised the bourgeois. 
 Lamartine's impecuniosity notwithstanding, there 
 was not an ounce of greed in his composition ;
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 35 
 
 Girardin in despite of his affluence, was not quite 
 so indifferent to money, but his support of the 
 Second Republic was due to other than money 
 causes. There was, to begin with, a personal as 
 well as a political feud between him and M. 
 Guizot ; apart from the resentment he felt against 
 the whole of the aristocracy on account of the 
 wrongs he had suffered at the hands of his father. 
 "I take it" added the Emperor in a most sig- 
 nificant tone, " I take it to be more noble to father 
 a child which one knows not to be one's own than 
 to deny the flesh of ones flesh, the blood of ones 
 blood, because it happens not to be born in holy 
 wedlock." 1 Girardin had, moreover, a grudge 
 against Cavaignac for having given him a terrible 
 fright, of which I will tell you one of these days. 
 
 " As for Changarnier," the Emperor went on, 
 after a few moments, " he would have done with 
 me what the Bourbons did with Ney ; that is, 
 given me a public trial ; a kind of spectacular 
 melodrama in some specially constituted court, 
 in which drama he would have endeavoured to 
 run me very hard as the hero, for he was con- 
 ceited and idiotic enough for anything, and pro- 
 vided he succeeded in drawing public attention 
 
 1 The first part of the sentence in italics is unquestionably an 
 allusion to the frequent doubts cast upon Louis Napoleon's own 
 legitimacy ; the second, a condemnation of the conduct of General 
 Alexis de Girardin with regard to his natural son. General de 
 Girardin did not behave well to his " love-child " even after he had 
 "legitimized" it. 
 
 D 2
 
 IM'1 RCURR1 N is 0] 
 
 elf, he would not have minded drawing 
 public attention to me. What Victor 1 lugo would 
 
 ne in Lamartine's stead, it Is impossible 
 for me to say. He might have treated me as he 
 ted his imaginary opponents in the Chamber ; 
 credited me with sentiments and projects 
 rether foreign to my heart and mind, in order 
 place' an eloquent speech. He might have 
 had me tried and sentenced to death for the sake 
 of writing another immortal Dernier Jour dun 
 Condamni '; I might have become at his pen 
 le plus grand des Napolion instead of Napoldon le 
 ]\tit, but my posthumous greatness would have 
 been less useful to me and to France than my 
 actual littleness. All nonsense apart," the 
 Emperor interrupted himself with a smile, " I 
 am not at all sorry that I incurred the enmity 
 of Victor Hugo, though I yield to no man in 
 my admiration of him as a poet. But I did 
 not want a constant repetition of Boileau's line 
 to Louis XIV. — ' Cessez de vaincre, sire, ou 
 je cesse d'ecrire ; ' and I should have inevitably 
 had that line over and over again if I had 
 retained his friendship. The age of le Roi- 
 Soleil is passed, probably never to return in con- 
 nection with the fulsome and non-critical worship 
 of a ruler. Better so. The poet has had to make 
 for the historian and leader-writer espe- 
 cially with regard to living sovereigns. The 
 poet who would endeavour to drown critical
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 37 
 
 appreciation with indiscriminate panegyrics of 
 the sovereign thus criticised, would most prob- 
 ably harm that sovereign instead of serving him ; 
 he would, at any rate, make him look ridiculous ; 
 and in France ridicule maims when it does not 
 kill, especially if it be levelled at a civilian ; and 
 according to a great many, I was only a civilian 
 and a sorry one at that. 
 
 " What Thiers would have done with me had 
 he been in Lamartine's place, I repeat, it is 
 equally impossible for me to say," the Emperor 
 went on. " I have often tried to think it out, 
 but must frankly confess that I dared not pursue 
 my thoughts to their logical conclusion. I am 
 certainly not less prone than others to think evil 
 of my fellow-men, but I fancy there is a tacit 
 compact between my mind and my heart — say, 
 between my understanding and my conscience — 
 to find extenuating circumstances for an enemy, 
 and that Thiers is my personal enemy, to an 
 even greater extent than my political one, I have 
 not the faintest doubt. I sometimes think that 
 if Thiers had had the disposal of me at that time 
 there would have been neither a summary ex- 
 ecution as in the case of Cavaignac, nor a public 
 trial as in the case of Changarnier or Hugo, but 
 a kind of escamotage. I should have disappeared, 
 whether temporarily or permanently would have 
 depended on circumstances. There might have 
 been a second mystery of the 'Iron Mask' in
 
 i NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 Thiers is ,i mental and moral as well 
 .! coward who would not have had 
 the pluck to resort to secret assassination, and 
 there was no Lady Macbeth by his side to screw 
 his courage to the sticking point. Cavaignac 
 is a brute, hut has the courage of the brute ; 
 Changarnier has courage also ; it is not the 
 courage of Henri IV. of whom it was said, 'Son 
 courage riait;' for Changarnier's courage grins 
 rather than laughs. To be absolutely correct, it 
 makes others grin ; it being more or less theatrical, 
 like that of the Prince de Conde, who opened the 
 trenches at Lerida to the sound of a score of 
 violins ; it is the dandy courage of some of the 
 captains under Louis XIV., but it is courage for 
 all that. Nor is Victor Hu«X) a coward. ' Show r 
 me how a man sings and I will tell you how he 
 will fight,' said Carlyle, whom you admire so 
 much ; and I fancy the axiom is generally though 
 not invariably true. All these men, Lamartine 
 included, have courage ; Thiers, I repeat, has 
 none. 1 1 is courage spells craft. Lamartine had 
 the courage to show me indirectly that he was 
 afraid of me by advising me to return to England ; 
 I say indirectly, for he did not put it in that way ; 
 he alleged that there was danger to me, not to 
 him ; but his fear strengthened my courage ; and 
 that is why I owe him a good turn, which I have 
 endeavoured to repay by heading the national 
 subscription for the settlement of his debts with a
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 39 
 
 handsomer sum than I would have given had he 
 been simply the great poet he is." 
 
 This then was Louis Napoleon's opinion of the 
 men with whom he had engaged in that game of 
 political bluff which lasted for more than three 
 years, though only two of his adversaries kept 
 playing to the last. Lamartine threw up his hand 
 almost directly after the first round, i.e. when he 
 had objected to Louis Napoleon's joining the 
 game at all — and discovered that Louis Napoleon 
 meant to join it in spite of his objection; in other 
 words, that neither intrigue nor threats would 
 keep him out of France. 1 For, immediately after 
 the disturbances in June, 2 during which Cavaignac 
 had virtually given himself away to a great many 
 of his intending backers by showing the kind of 
 game he contemplated playing henceforward, 
 Louis Napoleon slipped into Paris while the 
 streets around the Northern Railway Station 
 were still encumbered with the remains of 
 the barricades. " I was compelled to leave my 
 luggage in the cloak room and to make my 
 way on foot to the house of my friend who 
 had offered me his hospitality. I only carried 
 a very small carpet bag," said the Emperor 
 afterwards, when recounting the incidents of 
 
 1 The order for Louis Napoleon's arrest, transmitted by telegraph 
 to every prefect and sub-prefect in France on the 12th June, 1848, 
 and posted up in every commune almost immediately afterwards. 
 
 2 Not to be confounded with the revolt of June 1849, which was 
 quelled by Changarnier.
 
 
 I NDERCURR] NTS ( >F 
 
 arrival. " 1 had scarcely gone a hundred 
 
 . when 1 was stopped by an old woman. 
 
 1 . .\ . young man/ she cried, 'just put a 
 
 paving stone or so in their places ; help us a 
 
 bit i" get straight; we are all sixes and sevens, 
 
 some one must put an end to the confusion.' 
 
 • That's exactly what I have come here for, 
 
 madame ; 1 replied. The old woman did not 
 
 . how absolutely true these words were; I 
 
 myself have often pondered them since; and 
 
 invariably been reminded in connection with them 
 
 of that incident in Edmund Kean's life when he 
 
 trudged to Drury Lane in the snow on the night 
 
 of his first appearance on that stage which was to 
 
 witness his greatest triumphs." 
 
 Cavaignac's first and practically last hand 
 was, then, as I have said, a bad one from the 
 outset ; nevertheless he " came in " and drew 
 cards, trusting first, to his own faculty for 
 •'bluffing;" secondly, to that same faculty as 
 displayed by those who were still betting on 
 his game ; namely the whole of the staff of 
 Le National, founded eighteen years previously 
 by Thiers and Armand Carrel and edited at the 
 p<riod of which I treat by Armand Marrast. 
 That staff ought to have been warned by the 
 fate ol one of the founders of the paper (Armand 
 Carrel), of the danger of excessive "bluffing," 
 of the mortal penalty attached to such 
 "bluffing." But a few months of phenomenal
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 41 
 
 success in this respect had made them absolutely 
 reckless. Le National literally governed France 
 for a little while, 1 and its staff fancied they 
 would be allowed to continue governing, if 
 Cavaienac should succeed in his candidature for 
 the Presidency. But neither their bluffing, nor 
 that of Lamoriciere and Dufaure, who were staking 
 on Cavaignac's game with the moneys of the 
 State, was of much avail ; Cavaignac's game 
 was lost before Louis Napoleon had said that 
 he would "see him." "Your candidate does 
 not stand the ghost of a chance ; " wrote an 
 electioneering canvasser from the provinces 
 whither he had been sent by Lamoriciere. 
 " Even his name is against him. Cavaignac, 
 Cavaignac," said an elector, " Cavaignac means 
 nothing at all to Frenchmen. You say he has been 
 in Africa ; but I never heard of him. If his 
 name were Genevieve de Brabant or that of one 
 of the four sons of Aymon, 2 it might do ; it would 
 convey some kind of story, but I repeat, that of 
 Cavaignac conveys nothing at all. I prefer that 
 of Napoleon ; there is a ring about it ; it arouses 
 echoes in one's mind and heart, the echoes of 
 battle marches to which our fathers and grand- 
 fathers went to victory at Jena, at Austerlitz, 
 
 1 See An Englishman in Paris, vol. ii., chap, i., where there is a 
 list of the government appointments held by the members, literary 
 and otherwise, of Le National in the beginning of 1848. 
 
 2 The four knights of a Carlovingian legend who were mounted 
 on one horse named Bayard.
 
 UNDERCURREN i> OF 
 
 r.i defeat also, as a1 Waterloo, 
 
 >u say." This in answer to a timid remark 
 
 mine "Well, yes, Waterloo was a defeat; 
 
 a defeat more glorious perhaps than a victory ; 
 but your General Cavaignac won't retrieve it 
 
 and a second Napoleon may. I am afraid," 
 luded the agent. " that eleven-twelfths of the 
 
 held a similar opinion." As will he 
 
 from this, the Boucards and Latapies had 
 
 their work ; the Napoleonic legend which 
 
 had sown broadcast was blossoming into 
 
 fruit 
 
 I have already remarked that only two of 
 Louis Napohon's adversaries continued to play 
 after the first round, in which Cavaignac was 
 so signally worsted as to fling common polite- 
 to a successful rival to the winds with the 
 rest, when the newly-elected President offered to 
 shake hands with him. These two adversaries 
 respectively Adolphe Thiers and General 
 Changarnier, for Victor Hugo also flung up his 
 cards and began to yell that Hortense's son had 
 cheating, because the latter would not 
 divide the stakes by giving him the portfolio 
 lor Foreign Affairs which he may have coveted, 
 like two of the greatest statesmen-poets of 
 his own time, Chateaubriand and Lamartine. 
 Some say that Hugo aimed higher still and 
 wanted to be President of the Second Republic 
 himself. Judging by the material of which some
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 43 
 
 of the Presidents of the Third Republic have 
 been made, one feels inclined to think that such a 
 wish on the part of a man of note would be a 
 condescension, unless that man were a Louis 
 Napoleon or a Changarnier — in other words, 
 unless he intended to usurp the crown for himself 
 or offer it to others. 
 
 Was Changarnier working for a restoration or 
 for a dictatorship ? Opinion is divided on the 
 subject. We will endeavour to find out directly, 
 though I doubt if we shall succeed ; but in that 
 first round it looked uncommonly as if he wished 
 to emulate Monk, for he only completed his 
 " ante " in order to draw four cards to a supposed 
 king ; l but they were not sufficiently good to 
 admit of his betting, and before his turn for 
 betting came, he flung them away, and determined 
 to "sit tight" or a while and not to "come in" 
 except on a good hand, when he would bluff on 
 sure grounds. 
 
 Different from Changarnier's tactics were those 
 of Thiers, who did not attempt to play in that 
 first round, but sat watching the game or rather 
 the principal gamester, Louis Napoleon, in order 
 to get at his system. 2 He might as well have 
 
 1 The Comtc de Chambord. There is no doubt that the 4,687 
 votes polled by Changarnier at the Presidential elections were 
 given by isolated Legitimists in batches of two, three, and four- 
 They, the voters, saw in him a would-be Monk of another Bourbon 
 Restoration. 
 
 2 It is worthy of record that among the stray votes at the
 
 UND1 RCURREN rS I »I 
 
 Kaempfler's automatic chess-player for 
 
 all the information he got. Though we shall 
 
 with Thiers again, when the outlines of 
 
 ortrait as given by the Emperor will be 
 
 in as it were t it is time to look on our 
 
 own account at Thiers, "the great Thiers" as 
 
 some of the French journalists continue to 
 
 call him : these same journalists denying the 
 
 epithet of great to Bismarck "on account of his 
 
 craft," although it is very doubtful whether the 
 
 I Chancellor could have resorted to meaner 
 shifts than those which crop up daily, nay, hourly, 
 in the life of the French statesman of whom, 
 moreover, it is difficult to record one private 
 or political action sufficiently generous to throw 
 a lasting ray of light in the otherwise sombre 
 picture. 
 
 Of course, I am not going to write Thiers' 
 biography. I cannot too often remind the 
 reader that I lay no claim to the title of his- 
 torian or to that of biographer. I would, more- 
 over, state, once for all, that, notwithstanding 
 the many assertions to the contrary of both 
 friendly and unfriendly critics, I hold no brief 
 for the late Emperor of the French, and that 
 t of all have I been engaged as the Devil's 
 
 lentia] elections there were not a dozen for either Thiers 
 or Hugo. Thiers, for reasons that will appear directly, had not 
 even come forward as a candidate. Hugo never had a desire to 
 become President of the Republic, but coveted the portfolio of 
 Foreign Affairs.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 45 
 
 Advocate against the memory of the first 
 President of the Third Republic. The French 
 Republicans may canonize him with Gambetta and 
 Favre, for what I care, and if they want another 
 trio of such saints as " understudies " I will give 
 them a long list from which to choose. This much 
 I do say : whenever and wherever historians put 
 the memory of Napoleon III. on its trial for the 
 calamities that resulted to France from the 
 Franco-German War, the memory of Thiers 
 ought to stand arraigned by the side of the other 
 as an accessory before the fact. Lest this should 
 appear an unfounded accusation on my part, I 
 will at the outset of this book solemnly undertake 
 to produce at the end chapter and verse for what 
 I have just stated. At least two of the actors 
 in that particular prologue to the War are alive. 
 They will have the right of contradicting me. 
 
 At this early stage it will be sufficient for me 
 to prove that at no time in his career was Louis 
 Napoleon the dupe of Thiers, not even imme- 
 diately before or during the miscarried attempt at 
 Boulogne when the future Emperor issued a decree 
 appointing his enemy — for he always knew Thiers 
 to be such — chief of the Provisional Government. 
 Thiers, in spite of everything that has been said 
 about his marvellous intuition and the rest, was, 
 at times, absolutely purblind to the effect of his 
 duplicity and craft upon others. Out of that 
 duplicity and craft he had woven around himself
 
 I MM RCURREN is OF 
 
 a fal thick as to 1"' literally impenetrable 
 
 ■ the inside, and he fondly imagined that those 
 de could not espy his actions. He was a 
 bad sportsman, or he would have known that the 
 rienced hunter watches the dense under- 
 . th that hides the wild brute and not the wild 
 brute himself, whom in reality he cannot see, and 
 whose movements are only revealed to him by 
 signs imperceptible, by sounds inaudible to the in- 
 experienced, but of the brute's presence in that 
 undergrowth he is nevertheless practically certain, 
 he has "tracked" his quarry thither, 
 guided by the devastation the latter has spread 
 around in his course, by the blood of his victims. 
 Thiers' track was positively reeking with the 
 blood of his victims, the blood of the Republicans 
 whom he had pitted against the Bourbons in 1830, 
 against the d'Orleans in '4S ; it was bestrewn 
 with the maimed remains of two dynasties, and 
 yet he fancied that he would secure another victim 
 in Louis Napoleon, whom he had already en- 
 oured to kill physically, if possible; politi- 
 cally, if failing in the other attempt, eight years 
 re the hitter's advent to the Presidency. I 
 am referring once more to the affair at Boulogne, 
 which every one was agreed in saying was a trap 
 laid by the little man for the son of Queen 
 Hortense. What every one did not and does 
 not know is this. Prince Louis suspected it to 
 be a trap, though he did not expect it to close
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 47 
 
 upon him, as it did, for six years. I have by me 
 several notes referring to private remarks on that 
 subject by the Emperor, which preclude all doubts 
 as to Prince Louis Napoleon's mental grasp of 
 the whole situation. Their reproduction here, 
 even in the most condensed form, is unfortun- 
 ately out of the question. These notes show con- 
 clusively : 1. that Louis Napoleon fostered few 
 illusions with regard to the success of the pro- 
 jected Boulogne attempt ; 2. that had he con- 
 sidered it to be even more of a forlorn hope than 
 he did consider it, he would still have attempted 
 it, because he wished to draw attention to himself 
 at any cost, and because his financial position was 
 almost desperate. Of two things, one would 
 assuredly happen : he would be tried in some 
 superior court and his name would be on every 
 Frenchman's lips ; or if Louis Philippe was still 
 frightened of untoward revelations with regard to 
 the influence of the Napoleonic legend, as he 
 had been in 1836, he would send Louis Napoleon 
 out of the country once more with a decent sum 
 of money. 3. The appointment of Thiers as chief 
 of the Provisional Government meant nothing in 
 the event of Louis Napoleon's success. That 
 appointment could be rescinded at the first con- 
 venient opportunity ; for even as early as 1840, 
 Louis Napoleon had no intention of affording 
 Thiers the smallest chance of reducing to practice 
 in his (Louis Napoleon's) case, the formula Thiers
 
 UNDERCURRENTS 01 
 
 had invented in order i<> lord it over Louis 
 Philippe: "The king reigns, but does not 
 govern." The notes of these conversations bear 
 no particular dates, only the years in which they 
 place are mentioned. Those to which I am 
 referring just now more especially are labelled 
 
 : hence a few months alter Thiers' return 
 from exile ; at which time the Empire was settling 
 down to its new position, and when, as some 
 critics might remark, '' the Emperor could afford 
 to pretend to be wise after the event." That 
 Napoleon III. pretended to no such wisdom, 
 that he would not have intrusted Thiers with 
 a portfolio at no matter what period of his 
 
 idential or imperial career will be suffi- 
 ciently patent from the following fact. During 
 the Odilon-Barrot Ministry, the opposition of 
 Thiers became so utterly unbearable that the 
 Premier had him and several members of his 
 faction summoned to the Elysee, and at the 
 end of the interview proposed that Thiers 
 himself should form a Ministry. Thiers declined 
 the offer and for very good reasons, for after he 
 was gone, the Prince-President turned to Barrot. 
 " Do you imagine, my dear Minister," he said, 
 " that if M. Thiers had taken you at your word 
 and consented to accept a portfolio, I would have 
 consented to intrust him with one ? If you 
 entertained such an idea for a single moment, 
 you must have been strangely mistaken in me."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 49 
 
 No ; a thousand times no ; Louis Napoleon 
 never for one single instant mistook Thiers' 
 character or intentions. He knew the value of 
 Thiers' agitation in favour of the removal of his 
 uncle's remains from St. Helena to Paris, which 
 agitation was coincident with the publication of 
 the History of the Consulate and the Empire ; 
 consequently intended as an enormous self- 
 advertisement for the author ; he also knew the 
 reasons that had prompted the laying of the 
 trap at Boulogne. If in the face of all this 
 he appointed Thiers the chief of the Provisional 
 Government, it was to meet craft with craft. 
 If the expedition had been successful, the ap- 
 pointment would have been rescinded ; the ex- 
 pedition failing as it did, it simply discredited 
 Thiers in the eyes of the adherents of Louis 
 Philippe, for there were letters to prove that 
 Thiers had not been thus appointed without his 
 knowledge or against his will. Louis Napoleon 
 made many mistakes in his life ; he never made 
 a mistake with regard to Thiers' potentiality or 
 goodwill to him and his dynasty. 
 
 Thiers, on the other hand, made few mistakes 
 from his own point of view, and fewer still in 
 pursuit of the aim of his life which was, as M. 
 Charles Merruau, who knew him better than any 
 one, expressed it, " to found a Conservative 
 Republic and to marry her in the capacity of 
 President." But he made a terrible mistake in his 
 
 E
 
 i MM RCURR1 NTS OF 
 
 late of Louis Napoleon's potentiality before 
 and after his election to the Presidency. One single 
 instance among a hundred will bear out my con- 
 tention. Immediately after the insurrection of 
 I unc '49, Thiers, frantic with apprehension, ran 
 t«> his stockbroker, yelling to him, "Sell all my 
 "Leave them alone," said the other 
 quietly ; " Napoleon will save yon all from spolia- 
 tion and bankruptcy." "He," exclaimed Thiers, 
 rnfully, " he is too great an imbecile." 
 This was the man with whom the Prince- 
 
 ident had to contend everywhere, but prin- 
 cipally in the Chamber. Was the game an equal 
 one ? Yes, and it would have remained an equal 
 one during the Empire if the Emperor had 
 trusted to himself alone. But during '49 — '51 
 the game was absolutely equal, although at the 
 beginning of that period, Louis Napoleon had 
 scarcely an ally in the Chamber. For when 
 1 >upin aine and Morny joined the small group 
 of his apparently faithful partisans, the game was 
 more than half-won or they would not have 
 joined. They as well as those who completed 
 the victory; Persigny, Fleury, Maupas, Saint- 
 Arnaud, and Dr. Yeron shall have a chapter to 
 themselves ; for once more, I wish to remind the 
 reader and above all the critics, that I have neither 
 the skill, the energy, the perseverance, the 
 courage, nor the inclination to incorporate all 
 these into one group or genre picture. Fortu-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 51 
 
 nately for myself and for others, I am aware of 
 my deficiencies in this respect ; but I fancy that 
 with the aid of my notes I may succeed now and 
 then in producing a portrait or small scene, after 
 the manner of some of the Dutch, with whom I 
 claim affinity in origin. And it is because of 
 this knowledge of my shortcomings on the one 
 hand, and my confidence on the other, that I 
 would fain avoid the error committed by one of 
 those great Dutchmen whose best-known picture 
 stands close to Rembrandt's masterpiece in the 
 Museum in Amsterdam. 
 
 I am alluding to Bartholomew van der Heist, 
 who in his " Civic Guard's Banquet " painted four 
 and twenty distinct and separate masterpieces in 
 the shape of as many portraits, and who to a 
 very considerable extent spoilt the effect of each 
 " severally and jointly," as the lawyers would 
 say, by trying to amalgamate them into one 
 whole. To accomplish such a task successfully, 
 one must be able to ply one's brush like 
 Rembrandt, or one's pen like Motley or Green. 
 In default of such talent on my part, the reader 
 will, perhaps, be content with the " single figure " 
 of General Changarnier, the second of Louis 
 Napoleon's two adversaries who kept playing to 
 the end. It is sketched with the aid of hitherto 
 unpublished notes left to me by eye-witnesses of 
 the contest, at least two of whom were more than 
 ordinarily interested, and unless these notes are 
 
 e 2
 
 
 UND1 RCURREN rS OF 
 
 utterly misleading, I should be tempted to assign 
 ngarnier the position of first adversary. 
 •• The other day," says one of these memo- 
 randa which only bears the name of the month 
 and the year, February, [849, "Changarnier 
 .m-i1 the Prince-President the opportunity to 
 make his first bow before the Paris garrison as a 
 genera] officer of the National Guard. The 
 Prince- President was, of course, too sensible not 
 to take it, for he never shows to greater ad- 
 vantage than when in uniform and on horseback, 
 and he was probably not sorry to show the army 
 that he was something better than the despicable 
 pekin Cavaignac's swashbucklers have tried to 
 make him out. I am not in the Prince's con- 
 fidence with regard to his personal or public 
 policy, but it requires no very astute observer 
 to foresee that within an appreciably short time 
 -'nail have a second performance of the 18th 
 Brumaire, only slightly altered from the original, 
 for in the coining version the army will be the 
 "god from the machine," just as it was in the 
 first. There will not be the slightest difficulty in 
 casting the part of Lucien Bonaparte, which will 
 go to Dupin aine and not to Morny, but I am at 
 a loss to guess who is to fill the role of Generals 
 Bonaparte and Moreau in one. The Prince- 
 President cannot undertake it himself ; if he did, 
 failure would be a foregone conclusion, for, 
 though he is not the despicable pekin the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 53 
 
 Cavaignac party proclaim him to be, the army 
 would assuredly only follow one of their own, 
 and what is more, one of their own with an 
 acquired reputation, not to say a magnificent 
 prestige. Lamoriciere and Bedeau are as much 
 out of the question as Cavaignac himself, for 
 there is still the feeling among the Monarchists 
 that the 24th February of last year would have 
 finished differently than it did if Bedeau had wished 
 to nip the revolution in the bud as he could have 
 done. Rightly or wrongly construed, this means 
 that the Monarchists suspect Bedeau of being 
 sympathetic to republicanism, and the general who 
 is to guard the deputies as Moreau guarded the 
 Directory or the Directorate must be free from 
 such suspicion. The Prince-President would 
 be ill-advised indeed to confide his thoughts and 
 intentions to a general about whom he was not 
 perfectly sure. Bugeaud is unquestionably well- 
 disposed and friendly to the Prince- President ; 
 it was he who made the sensible suggestion that 
 he should adopt the uniform of a general officer 
 of the National Guard as his official dress, instead 
 of that of a general officer of the regular army 
 which he had a thought of adopting and which 
 would certainly have given umbrage to a great 
 many officers ; for the susceptibility of the French 
 Army defies logical analysis. But it is a moot 
 point whether Bugeaud would lend himself to 
 any plot, even if he were fully convinced that
 
 l M'lKt lURRENTS OF 
 
 plot would 1"' beneficial to France. Hence, 
 unless they arc going to send to Africa for some- 
 one, there only remains Th^odule Changarnier ; 
 and though the thought seems too ridiculous for 
 words, they may have selected him to act when 
 the time comes. After all, why not ? An ass 
 carried Christ into Jerusalem, why should not the 
 warrior whom Bugeaud compared to the packhorse 
 of the Marshal de Saxe carry the nephew to 
 the Imperial throne of his uncle; for that the 
 nephew is going to seat himself eventually on 
 that throne, unless he he killed before or during 
 the attempt, there is not the faintest doubt in my 
 mind, and mine is only the reflex of several 
 millions of minds. Yet, the thought that the Prince- 
 President and above all Persigny could have 
 taken Changarnier into his confidence seems 
 pretty nigh impossible. They could not have 
 been so utterly bereft of their senses ; they might 
 just a^ well have bawled their secret from the 
 top of Xotre-Dame, for Changarnier is abso- 
 lutely incapable of holding his tongue even to 
 his own life. Some years ago Ingres 
 called him Narcissus and Echo in one. 1 He has 
 
 1 The CIiariv<u-i dubbed him " Bergamotte and Pommadin." 
 
 " Changarnier, rcvenu de la rive africaine, 
 A de plus doux exploits excrce son talent, 
 II voudrait voir finir Tcre republicaine, 
 I 'our briller a la cour en costume galant. 
 Mais les eaux de senteur, poudres et bergamottes, 
 Ne rendent point la vie a ses charmes deTunts, 
 Et le guerrier, malgre tous ses parfums, 
 
 t pas en bonne odeur aupres des patriotes."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 55 
 
 an incurable mania for speechifying and for 
 striking attitudes and for making himself con- 
 spicuous which not all the courage in the world — 
 and no one denies his courage — could redeem. 
 He must put in his word ; he will not or cannot 
 obey orders silently, which unenviable idiosyncracy 
 earned him the name of the Marshal de Saxe's 
 packhorse. " I fancy I have followed the trade 
 of war long enough to know how to set about 
 it ; " he interrupted Marshal Bugeaud one day 
 when the latter was giving him his final instruc- 
 tions for an expedition against the Kabyles. 
 Bugeaud might have ordered him under arrest ; 
 but he simply smiled. " That proves nothing, 
 my dear general!" he said. "The Marshal de 
 Saxe had a baggage mule which followed him in 
 all his campaigns, but I never heard that the 
 animal was supposed to understand aught of the 
 Science of Warfare." 
 
 " The lesson was entirely lost upon Changarnier, 
 and if the Prince-President has selected him for 
 the part I suggested just now, he must be sorry 
 for it already, in spite of the magnificent manner 
 in which Changarnier managed the Prince's first 
 entrance on the scene. For that first entrance 
 was premature and uncalled for, it has let the cat 
 out of the bag too early, unless events are to 
 follow one another much quicker than I and a 
 great many with me anticipated." 
 
 My uncle was mistaken, Louis Napoleon had
 
 UNDERCURR] N is OF 
 
 made no compact with Changarnier but was 
 simply allowing him u> bluff to his heart's content, 
 without as much as attempting to see him until he 
 red his own hand good enough, and in the 
 meanwhile not at all dismayed by the constant 
 I of Changarnier that every one of his hands 
 contained a king or a pair of kings. The Prince- 
 President kept quietly shuffling and cutting the 
 pack tor " fours," having at the same time marked 
 the " joker" in the shape of Dupin aind. At last 
 the clever manipulator managed to get his 
 •fours" in a " rigollot," as the French card- 
 sharpers call it (anglice, a plaster), and drew them. 
 Some historians say they were four knaves, others 
 compare them to the four sergeants of La 
 Rochelle, with a better lot in store for them than 
 Bories and his fellow plotters. I myself simply 
 call them Saint-Arnaud, Vieyra, Espinasse, and 
 de Maupas. The roles of three of these have 
 often been commented on ; Vieyra has not had his 
 meed of notice from the historians, although it 
 was practically he who prevented the National 
 Guard from repeating their swaggering of four 
 and a half years previously. He had been a 
 captain of that body for a good while. A couple of 
 days before the coup d dtat he got his colonelcy- 
 in-chief on the grand staff vice General Foltz. 
 On the 2nd December he frustrated all their plans 
 of foregathering in numbers ; had he not done so 
 there would have been a terrible shock between
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 57 
 
 them and the regulars, for the latter were neither 
 disposed to fraternize with nor to be made the 
 victims of the civic warriors, as they had been 
 compelled to do by the lukewarmness of their 
 chiefs on the 24th February, 1848. (See An 
 Englishman in Paris, vol. i., ch. x.) Never- 
 theless, rumours of a rising of the National Guard 
 reached the Elysee, and on the morning of the 
 3rd December Colonel Vieyra was sent for. 
 " They are beating assembly," said Louis 
 Napoleon. " Your Highness is mistaken," 
 replied the Colonel; "they can't beat assembly 
 for every one of their drums was cut early 
 yesterday morning." That was how Vieyra 
 nipped all attempts at swaggering in the bud. 
 Not heroic, perhaps, but clever. " My dear 
 colonel," said the Emperor a couple of years 
 later, " had you failed, you would have had a 
 collar of hemp ; as it is, allow me to present you 
 with a collar of silk." And he handed him the 
 grand cross of the Legion of Honour. The last 
 time I saw Colonel Vieyra was during the 
 Exhibition of 1889. He was then eighty-five 
 years old and almost as active as I am now. He 
 died a few months later.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 When my uncle opined that Dupin aini and 
 not Morny would be cast for Lucien Bonaparte's 
 part in the expected revival of the 1 8th 
 Brumaire, he did not imply a compliment to 
 Louis Napoleon's half-brother by suspecting him 
 of being less venal than the great lawyer, and 
 therefore less susceptible of being tampered with. 
 He was simply foreseeing, not a difficult thing to 
 do, that in the next Chamber, Dupin would 
 
 me the place he had filled for many years 
 with much eclat. Both Morny and Dupin were 
 equally venal, and it was probably the only thing 
 they had in common with each other. Morny 
 had a great deal of physical courage — the kind 
 of courage the teaching of which forms part of 
 a French gentleman's education. Dupin was a 
 coward, but with the courage to admit his 
 cowardice. An anecdote of his early life will 
 explain what I mean. His father had narrowly 
 
 ped death on the scaffold during the Reign 
 
 ot Terror. Though a staunch Republican, he 
 
 hailed the advent of the Directory and the 
 
 ilate with intense relief, and sent his eldest 
 
 on to Paris to study law under Tronchet, the
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF THE SECOND EMPIRE 59 
 
 same who with Malesherbes had solicited the 
 dangerous honour of defending Louis XVI. at 
 his trial. The stripling — for he was little more — 
 remained absolutely impervious to the seductions 
 and fascinations of the capital, and in six years 
 obtained the highest distinctions his Faculty had 
 to bestow. When complimented on his success, 
 and the perseverance and pluck implied in the 
 achievement, he answered, " I accept the com- 
 pliment as to my perseverance. I cannot accept 
 it as to my pluck, for it was not pluck but 
 fear that made me accomplish these things. I 
 trembled like an aspen leaf when I beheld the 
 First Consul during the reviews in the Champ de 
 Mars, and said to myself, " The brute will take 
 us all as food for powder. I must escape such a 
 death as that. That is why I studied so hard." 
 Original, if pusillanimous, is it not ? In fact, 
 Dupin, as we shall see directly, was original 
 from beginning to end — original even in his 
 venality ; Morny was not original at all. The 
 half-brother of Louis Napoleon played his part 
 in the coup (Vdtat, the importance of which part 
 has been much exaggerated, through the force 
 of circumstances ; Dupin performed his share in 
 the preliminaries to the coup oTdtat, the importance 
 of which share has not been sufficiently insisted 
 on, unconscious, perhaps, of its importance, at 
 any rate in the beginning, but from pure choice 
 afterwards.
 
 UNDERCURREN r> OF 
 
 1 will deal with Morny first; the accident of 
 birth befriended his necessities, and his 
 
 ssities prompted the assumption of his role. 
 Unlike Persigny, Morny had not even the faith 
 that moves mountains, nor the generosity that 
 - such want of faith. But for his knowledge 
 that he had gone too far either to serve the 
 Republic or the ( >rleanist dynasty again, he would 
 have retired from his position at the eleventh 
 hour. As it was, he tried to induce Louis 
 Napoleon to do so by informing him that he had 
 secured a retreat for both before it was too late. 
 
 What if you should fail?" he is reported to 
 said, according to Persigny, who was present 
 at the interview. "We shall not fail," replied 
 the latter ; ''but if we do, you need only concern 
 yourself with the arrangements for our funerals, 
 unless you would like to take your share of this." 
 
 ' This was a small packet wrapt in white paper 
 which he took from his pocket. " It's poison," 
 said Persigny quietly, " and of the deadliest, and 
 ii you mean to use it, you had better secure your 
 dose now, for it is doubtful whether you will 
 be with the Prince and myself to the last. I will 
 not stir from his side, happen what may." Morny 
 shook his head w-ith a supercilious smile. " I am 
 not fond of such violent measures," he answered. 
 The supremest comfort Morny could think of for 
 his half-brother when he left him shortly before 
 midnight on the ist December, 1851, was this:
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 61 
 
 " Whatever happens within the next few hours, 
 you are sure to have a sentry at your door when 
 you awake to-morrow morning." The episode of 
 the packet of poison remained an absolute secret 
 between the Prince, Persigny, and Morny until 
 several years after the establishment of the 
 Empire, at which time Persigny told one of my 
 grand-uncles of it under the following circum- 
 stances. Persigny had at Chamarande a dog to 
 which he was greatly attached. Though not 
 very old, the animal fell ill, and in spite of the 
 vet.'s careful treatment seemed to suffer much. It 
 would take neither food nor physic from any 
 one's hand but Persigny's. At last its death 
 was decided on. " I poisoned it myself," said 
 Persigny, when telling the tale. " I poisoned it 
 myself, with one of the three doses of poison I 
 had had in my possession since the middle of 1 85 1 . 
 They were originally intended for the Emperor, 
 myself, and a person I need not name, in the event 
 of our failure." (In the note relating to this con- 
 versation, my uncle insists, with how much justifica- 
 tion I know not, that the unnamed person was 
 Miss Howard, afterwards Comtesse de Beau- 
 regard.) " On the 30th November, 185 1, I offered 
 that third dose to Morny, who tried to shake the 
 Prince-President's courage by telling him that 
 he had secured a safe retreat for him if matters 
 should go wrong, in fact, almost persuaded him to 
 avail himself, of the retreat before matters did go
 
 I NDERCURREN rS OF 
 
 wrong. Morny refused to have recourse to such 
 rat.- measures. I had forgotten all about 
 my having the poison, though not the fact of 
 my having bought it, until quite lately. I have- 
 still two doses left ; they maybe useful someday. 
 Who knows? What did the Prince-President 
 i Menu's refusal of the poison?" Persigny 
 went on, in reply to my uncle's question to that 
 effect, "the Prince-President said nothing but 
 merely smiled, and he has never alluded to the 
 incident up to the present. Though you know the 
 Emperor very well, you evidently do not know 
 this. The Emperor's like or dislike of people 
 is altogether independent of the merits or defects 
 ot these people; it is altogether independent 
 ot the ascertained or surmised corresponding 
 sentiment with regard to himself on the part of 
 these people. Put it in this way, if you like. 
 \\ here his affections are concerned, the Emperor 
 plays throughout with gold, though he may feel 
 absolutely convinced that those with whom he 
 plays are staking worthless counters." 
 
 Then Persigny apparently went off at a tangent, 
 for he suddenly asked, " Have vou ever seen the 
 Emperor and his cousin, Prince Jerome, together ? 
 I do not mean in public, but in private." My 
 uncle admitted that he had not. "You know," 
 said Persigny, " that Napoleon 1 1 1., like Napoleon 
 I., addresses his near relations in the second person 
 singular when they are by themselves, and that
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 63 
 
 his relations do the same ? " " Yes," assented my 
 uncle, " I have heard the Emperor and Princesse 
 Mathilde do it in my presence." "Well," re- 
 marked Persigny, "although the Emperor ad- 
 dresses his cousin Jerome in the second person 
 singular, the latter always answers in the second 
 person plural." " Out of deference, perhaps," 
 suggested my uncle, though he knew better. 
 Persigny laughed outright. " All the respect 
 Jerome has for the Emperor will go into a very 
 small compass indeed. No, it is not respect on 
 Jerome's part ; it is resentment at a quarrel they 
 had shortly before the advent of the Prince to the 
 Presidency. When Jerome made his appearance 
 at the Elysee after that, he adopted the less 
 familiar and affectionate form, and he has never 
 departed from it since. The Emperor, who in 
 reality has been a second father to him, continued 
 to address him as before, just as if nothing had 
 happened. If the truth were known, the Emperor 
 still lives in hopes that his cousin will resume the 
 old style, for, I repeat, the Emperor, where his 
 affections are concerned, plays with gold, knowing 
 full well, as he may, that those with whom he plays 
 stake counters. He is not deceived re£ardinL>- 
 Jerome's goodwill to himself, to the Empress, and 
 to the little boy just born ; he has not forgotten 
 Morny's attempt to discourage him on the eve of 
 the coup d'dtat, but if ever blood was thicker 
 than water it is Louis Napoleon's, and he goes on
 
 UNDERCURREN is I >i 
 
 loving those whom he lias loved, and will go on 
 loving them whatever they may do." 
 
 It would be idle to pretend that Louis Napoleon 
 
 ished such affection for all his allies in the 
 struggle he was waging, or even that he admired 
 them all and attributed their aid to their personal 
 
 rd for him. Napoleon III.'s character was 
 curiously complex : he could admire without the 
 ir the object of his admiration ; he 
 could respect without the least admiration for 
 the object of his respect ; he could love without 
 the least admiration or respect for the object of 
 his love or liking. One instance will make my 
 
 ning clear, it is not at all pertinent to my 
 nt subject, but, in virtue of my being a mere 
 gossiper, 1 claim the right to take my illustrations 
 wherever I find them. Napoleon III., in spite 
 of his scepticism with regard to men, sincerely 
 cted Drouyn de Lhuys, but did not like him ; 
 the statesman, on the other hand, was too sterling 
 and upright to respect his sovereign's devious 
 political ways, but he liked him. " Drouyn de 
 Lhuys and I," said the Emperor one day, "we 
 each give away to the other what we are 
 individually most in want of ourselves." 
 
 It is very doubtful whether Louis Napoleon 
 ever contemplated enlisting Andre Marie Dupin 
 among his allies, either before or after his 
 advent to the Presidency. Though virtually 
 
 •ranger to the soil of France, the Prince
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 65 
 
 knew every man of note on it, and from their 
 past judged how far they could and would be 
 useful to him in the immediate future. There 
 could be no possible mistake in that respect in 
 Dupin's case. Wherever he could do so with- 
 out absolute risk of liberty and life, young Dupin 
 had shown himself a bitterly hostile opponent 
 to Napoleon I. and his reign. In a Manual of 
 Roman Law he had lampooned the great 
 captain as Tiberius while presenting the great 
 captain's victim, the young Due d'Enghien, under 
 the traits of Germanicus ; he had bespattered the 
 fallen giant after his abdication at Fontainebleau, 
 and insulted him during his imprisonment at St. 
 Helena. True, he had also defended Michel 
 Ney against the acrimonious indictment of that 
 other able lawyer Bellart, who, moreover, owed 
 a great deal to Napoleon I. which Dupin did not ; 
 but whatever merit might have accrued to him 
 from this act of independence under the Restora- 
 tion, he spoilt it by his prominent position ten 
 years later among the mourners at Bellart's 
 funeral. Not one but a half-dozen eminent men 
 openly reproached him with his political apostasy. 
 "You do not seem to understand that the de- 
 fenders of Michel Ney were longing to hear the 
 De Profiindis recited over his executioners," he 
 replied, and evidently considered the epigram 
 sufficient to condone as well as to explain his 
 insult to the memory of the martyred victim of 
 
 F
 
 I \M RCURREN I - OF 
 
 one of the foulest crimes perpetrated under the 
 pretext of d) nastic necessity . 
 
 I I ipin's belief in the omnipotence of epigram, 
 as a moral veneer tor political as well as other 
 immorality, was to .1 great extent justified by his 
 thorough knowledge of and his supreme contempt 
 tor the majority oi his countrymen, and especially 
 tor those actively engaged in politics. He knew 
 that in France one well delivered epigram is 
 sufficient to start a man on a prosperous career, 
 sufficient to hurl the man at whom it is levelled 
 from the pedestal he has climbed with infinite 
 trouble and perseverance. And seeing that he 
 had not his equal in the facility for coining them, 
 not even in Talleyrand, that his peer in that 
 respect, Rivarol, had been in his grave since the 
 beginning of the century, Dupin had never been 
 very sparing of them. From that moment, how- 
 ever, he began to sow them broadcast, taking 
 care not to hide his light under a bushel, for 
 modesty was not Dupin's besetting sin. Rather 
 than plead and not be reported, he refused to 
 plead at all, which in fact, he did when asked 
 to defend Beranger a third time. Of course, 
 he did not say so in as many words, but no one 
 was his dupe, because every one was aware that, 
 as an exceptional measure, the Government in- 
 tended to exclude reporters from the trial. 
 \< vertheless, almost every one thought it per- 
 fectly natural that Dupin should not care to
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 67 
 
 waste his truly marvellous epigrammatical and 
 
 histrionic talent on empty benches and even 
 
 without a chance of having them conveyed 
 
 second hand to the public who were so eager 
 
 for them ; so that when in 1832 he was elected 
 
 to the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies 
 
 the public took care that he should have no 
 
 cause of complaint on that score. They flocked 
 
 to the Palais- Bourbon as their successors flock to 
 
 the Academie at the reception of a new member, 
 
 and they were invariably better rewarded for their 
 
 journey than the latter. They flocked to the 
 
 Palais-Bourbon as the cultured Parisians of to-day 
 
 flock to the Comedie-Francaise, to roll on their 
 
 mental palates the epigrams of Dumas fils and 
 
 Edouard Pailleron, sublimely indifferent to the 
 
 goodness or badness of the cause on which those 
 
 epigrams are expended. Dupin spared neither 
 
 friends nor foes. When seated in the presidential 
 
 chair, perched atop of that storied platform, and 
 
 with that deep-toned silver bell in front of him, he 
 
 had only subjects for vivisection, whose mental 
 
 sores he laid bare with one deft turn of his scalpel. 
 
 The patient might be in the opposite political 
 
 camp or in his own, the epigram when on the tip 
 
 of Dupin's tongue had to find vent. It fact, it is 
 
 difficult to determine to which party Dupin 
 
 belonged, for he lashed them all in turns. Like 
 
 Thiers, he is a political acrostic. Thiers' 
 
 whole spells "personal ambition," Dupin's 
 
 F 2
 
 UNDERCI RRENTS OF 
 
 "rapacity." llis average income at the bar 
 during the Restoration was about So, ooo francs, 
 an enormous sum in those days, never exceeded 
 at that time by the most brilliant legal luminaries, 
 Berryer included. But Berryer had the improvi- 
 dent habit of remitting part of his clients' fees 
 now and then ; nay. in one instance, remitted 
 the whole of such a fee lest a client's daughter, 
 whose dowry had been swallowed up in her 
 father's lawsuit, should go husbandless. Dupin 
 exacted his to the uttermost farthing and was 
 not always satisfied then, as the Napoleonic 
 generals whom he defended under the Restora- 
 tion and the three Englishmen who helped 
 Lavalette to escape, could have testified. Earn- 
 ing, as he did, 80,000 francs per annum, it was 
 but natural that he should have refused elevation 
 to the Bench under the Restoration at half that 
 stipend, but no sooner had Louis Philippe 
 ascended the throne than he accepted a pro- 
 curator-generalship. It would, he knew, pave 
 the way to the Presidency of the Chamber with 
 a salary of 100,000 francs; and the functions 
 would, moreover, leave him free to resume his 
 practice at the bar, as did M. Jules Grevy forty 
 years later on. For nearly eight years, Dupin 
 filled the presidential chair, and he would have 
 pmbably filled it till the end of Louis Philippe's 
 reign but for a combination between Thiers and 
 Mole, both of whom had got tired of his repeated
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 69 
 
 onslaughts, and by their tactics prevented his re- 
 election at the opening of the session of 1840. 
 Mole in his fall dragged Dupin with him. 
 
 This was the man who after an interval of ten 
 years was chosen once more to direct the debates 
 in the Chamber of Deputies, and whom the 
 would-be historians of the coup cTdtat have 
 unanimously left in the background. It is because 
 these writers, even M. de Maupas, whose work 
 I translated myself, have not had the unenviable 
 but nevertheless salutary advantage of attending 
 for days and days during several years the pro- 
 ceedings at the Palais- Bourbon, and that, therefore, 
 they do not know and fail to guess what a President 
 of the Chamber may and often will do in the 
 pseudo-exercise of his legitimate duties. I have 
 had that advantage, and do not hesitate to say 
 that a President of the French Chamber can mar 
 or make a ministry even more effectually than 
 the majority which supports such a ministry. 
 Although I had never seen Dupin at work, I felt 
 convinced the moment I read the innumerable 
 anecdotes and heard the absolutely unpublished 
 stories about him that as "an artisan " of the coup 
 d'dtat he ought to rank next to Persigny and 
 even before Fleury, which is not saying little as 
 the reader will find directly. It matters little or 
 nothing to my present purpose that his share of 
 the work was performed unconsciously, or, if not 
 unconsciously, against his own inclination, at any
 
 I NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 raic at the beginning of Louis Napoleon's pre- 
 sidency ; for I feel almost certain that not for one 
 
 at did he then harbour tile thought Or desire 
 
 of smoothing the Litter's road to the imperial 
 
 throne. That lie did smooth it is incontestable, 
 and that is why I have dwelt at such great length 
 ^n him, although the writing of his biography 
 would have been attractive to me under any 
 circumstances. He, a professed Republican — for 
 after Louis Philippe's fall he resumed that ap- 
 pellation once more — made the Republic, its 
 parliamentary adherents, its ministers, and for 
 that matter the whole of the legislature, ridiculous 
 in the eyes of France; and ridicule kills in France, 
 " especially when directed against a civilian," as 
 Louis Napoleon himself admitted. By making 
 the Republic ridiculous, he bred the wish in the 
 minds of Frenchmen to have clone with the. 
 rigime. That was, roughly speaking, his share 
 in the preparations for the coup d'dtat. 
 
 How he did it must be told in as few words 
 as possible, for I have already outrun the space 
 originally intended for Dupin. One day the 
 Protestant Minister, Athanasius Coquerel, was 
 trying to prove that the Republican system was 
 d on the Gospel. " Nonsense," exclaimed 
 Dupin. " I have yet to learn that Christ said 
 ' My republic is not of this world.' ' On another 
 occasion, Victor Schoelcher, who only died a couple 
 ot years a^o, havino- said in the course of one of
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 71 
 
 his speeches " We enjoy the happiness of living 
 under a Republic," he was violently interrupted 
 by the members of the Right. Astonished, the 
 speaker turned to the President for an explanation. 
 It came at once. " No one is questioning the 
 fact of the Republic ; they are only contesting the 
 fact of the happiness," remarked Dupin. " Per- 
 signy is no doubt the author of the coup oTdtat" 
 said the Emperor to my uncle when the news of 
 Dupin's death came (1865) ; " yet, but for Dupin, 
 there would have been a difficulty in performing 
 the piece ; he discredited the rival authors and 
 their companies, and finally shut up their 
 theatre." x 
 
 Napoleon III. was right; Persigny was virtu- 
 ally the sole author of the coup cVdtat. That his 
 
 1 In my various conversations with M. de Maupas and others, I 
 have never been able to ascertain with any degree of satisfaction 
 to myself whether Dupin's attitude in the early morning of the 2nd 
 December, 1851, was a carefully rehearsed one or forced upon him 
 by the knowledge of his powerlessness to resist the troops that had 
 invaded the Palais-Bourbon. All my interlocutors, but especially 
 Maupas, always turned the subject. Nevertheless, from evidence 
 gathered from other and entirely disinterested quarters, I am ot 
 opinion that Dupin knew what was going to happen. While Baze 
 and Leflo were arrested and led away, Dupin was left unmolested 
 in his apartments at the Palais-Bourbon, nay, free to roam about. 
 When, a few hours later, about three score of Deputies managed 
 to effect an entrance to the House, owing to an oversight of 
 Espinasse and Saint-Arnaud, and asked Dupin to preside over 
 their sitting, he declined and wished them good morning. Maupas 
 scarcely devotes half a dozen lines to his share in the proceedings ; 
 the fact remains that after the establishment of the Empire, he w as 
 on very friendly terms with the Emperor. What was his reward ? 
 Not the mere public one of a senatorship with its 20,000 or 
 30,000 frs. per annum, but a substantial private one, 1 feci convinced.
 
 I NDER4 URREN l> OF 
 
 name has been cast into the shadow by that of 
 the principal actor of his piece is due to the fact 
 
 that the actor was perhaps greater as an actor 
 than the author as an author. The same thing 
 has happened on the Stage with the authors of 
 an Cousin, Kip van Winkle, Ad) ionic 
 UAubergedes Adrets; in fact in all 
 - where the interpreter's genius surpassed 
 that of the playwright. But, however great the 
 author, if his piece be a spectacular one, like the 
 coup ifc'ia/, he must in addition to his principal 
 interpreter or interpreters, have various stage- 
 managers, and notably able editors and journalists 
 who, the editors and journalists, will, without 
 revealing the actual plot of the play, gently 
 stimulate the interest of the public until the play 
 be ready to stir the public into enthusiasm or 
 disgust. Cavour found his stage-managers in 
 La Marmora and Cialdini, his editors and journal- 
 ists almost everywhere ; Bismarck had von Roon 
 and Moltke to rely upon in the one capacity, 
 and a score of eminent men throughout the 
 Fatherland to propagate his views by means of 
 the printing press. Journalists and captains 
 were virtually ready to Cavour's and Bismarck's 
 hands. Cavour and Bismarck bore honoured 
 and historic names which inspired confidence ; 
 their collaborateurs offered themselves. Persigny 
 had no ancestry to boast of, and his name was 
 only known in connection with two miscarried
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 73 
 
 adventures and to a small minority. It is doubt- 
 ful whether his name inspired any confidence at 
 all. Yet, in spite of these drawbacks, he found 
 two men of inestimable value to his undertaking, 
 or to speak by the card, he at once guessed their 
 capabilities when chance or design threw them 
 across his path. I am referring to Dr. Veron 
 and Colonel (afterwards General) Fleury. 
 
 I doubt whether the former's name is known, 
 at any rate in connection with the political events 
 preceding the Second Empire, to one out of 
 every thousand Americans or Englishmen. I 
 doubt whether that of the latter is more than a 
 name to one out of every hundred ; yet both these 
 men contributed powerfully to Louis Napoleon's 
 elevation to the throne ; but unlike Dupin's, 
 their support was given consciously and with a 
 full knowledge of what might be the result. 
 Emile Fleury was absolutely disinterested in the 
 matter, but he had an innate sense of the fitness 
 of things, and considered that a king should 
 enact the king, a usurper have the daring, the 
 lawlessness and grandeur of a usurper. Louis 
 Philippe, it must not be forgotten, was as much 
 of a usurper as Louis Napoleon, but he lacked the 
 daring, lawlessness and grandeur of a usurper. 
 His fall from the throne was not a fall, but a 
 tumble. He himself was probably too old to head 
 a struggle for his crown, but his four sons were all 
 in the prime of life, and not one stretched forth a
 
 i MM RCURREN I S I »l 
 
 hand to save that crown, it' not for their septua 
 genarian father, at any rate for their ten-year-old 
 nephew. That this tame submission to the will of 
 the mob was profoundly distasteful to the whole 
 of the French armythere can be not the slightest 
 doubt, albeit that the contempt for the mob and 
 the disapproval of the princes' tameness manifested 
 themselves at the time and subsequently in very 
 different ways. Here is a practically unknown 
 story from the lips of General Talandier, the same 
 to whom I referred in the first chapter, as having 
 stemmed, when but a colonel, the tide of insur- 
 rection on the occasion of Louis Napoleon's 
 attempt at Strasburg. " Fleury," said the general, 
 when alluding to the former's share in the coup 
 d 'ctat, " well, Fleury felt what most of us did, 
 that it was no use fighting for those who would 
 not tight for themselves. That most of us were 
 ot that opinion I could prove to you by a dozen 
 instances. One, however, will do. During the 
 month of February, '48, I commanded the 4th 
 Brigade, which was quartered at the Ecole 
 Militaire. When I learnt the news of Louis 
 Philippe's departure, I sent for the seven colonels 
 under my orders, for there were three regiments 
 of the line, three of cavalry, and a battery of 
 artillery. I proposed to gather up our little army 
 and to take up a position at Passy and to bring 
 back the king if possible. All but one colonel 
 refused."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 75 
 
 And we must bear in mind that this was before 
 the Due d'Aumale's want of action became 
 known. The enthusiastic co-operation of the army 
 in the coup ddtat requires no other explanation 
 than that. All the tales of the fabulous sums of 
 money given on the eve of it to Morny, Maupas, 
 and Saint-Arnaud — to the latter especially, as 
 bribes for the army — are so many fabrications. 
 To begin with, the army did not want bribing, 
 and least of all the garrisons in and around Paris. 
 Apart from the magic influence of the name of 
 Napoleon, to which I have already alluded, and to 
 which I shall have to allude again directly, the 
 army had grievances of its own to avenge on the 
 people. The defeats of their predecessors in the 
 Revolution of 1830 and the defeats of their fellow- 
 soldiers in the Revolution of '48 — defeats attri- 
 butable to no fault of theirs — were rankling in their 
 minds. Their subsequent victories in June '48 
 and June '49 were not of a kind to efface the 
 humiliating recollections of those defeats. If the 
 truth were known, they were all but too eager to 
 try conclusions with the turbulent scum of Paris, 
 and especially with the National Guard. Secondly, 
 if bribery with money had been necessary, Louis 
 Napoleon could not have done it, for he had not 
 the wherewithal. I have more than one impartial 
 authority (Maupas' evidence might be suspected) 
 for my positive statement that the sum of money in 
 the possession of Louis Napoleon at 10.30 p.m. on
 
 UNDERCI RREN rS O] 
 
 the ist December '51 did not exceed 65,000 frs., 
 of which had only arrived two or three 
 before from England, with a polite but 
 very firmly worded intimation : "This will be the 
 last remittance under existing circumstances." 
 Tlu- n-al significance of the sentence quoted I 
 have explained elsewhere ; ' with regard to 
 my statement that the 50.000 frs. were nearly 
 the whole of Louis Napoleon's resources, I have 
 no less an authority than that of the late Baron 
 Janus de Rothschild, on whose bank the draft from 
 London, and made payable to Persigny, was drawn. 
 At least such is my reading of a note in my 
 uncle's handwriting" and relating to a conversation 
 on the subject with Baron James. My uncles 
 frequently called on him,' 2 and though, of 
 course a busy man, he was rarely too busy to 
 decline chatting for a little while on matters not 
 pertinent to their call. It was during one of 
 these chats that Baron James delivered himself 
 of the following, but I have no clue to the origin 
 of the topic. "All these cock-and-bull stories 
 about the wholesale bribing of the Paris garrison 
 on the day of the coup d 'dtat would be vastly 
 amusing, if they did not undermine the respect 
 of the soldier for his officers — consequently, 
 discipline. Some- one in authority should give 
 them a flat contradiction once for all. The 
 
 1 An Englishman in Paris, vol. ii. chap. iii. 
 - My Paris Xote-Book, p. 4.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 77 
 
 Emperor cannot do it for many reasons ; besides, 
 no one would believe him if he did. I could do 
 it, but people would believe me even less than 
 the Emperor, and yet I could give them proof 
 positive for what I might state, for I know almost 
 to a few thousand francs how much money Louis 
 Napoleon had in his possession on the night of 
 the 1 st December. He received 50,000 frs. from 
 England two days before, I saw the draft ten 
 minutes after it had been presented and I do not 
 believe he had another 20,000 frs. to save his 
 life. Where could he have got the money from ? 
 Miss Howard had given all she had to give ; 
 Princesse Mathilde had stripped herself of every 
 bit of available property, portable or otherwise 
 long before that. From the Bank of France, 
 which it is said, advanced him ever so many 
 millions, or to put it correctly, was compelled by 
 him to advance these millions in return for some 
 privilege ? He had no privilege to give, and 
 people might just as well say that we advanced 
 him the money. Nay, the latter hypothesis would 
 sound more plausible, for we, at any rate, could 
 have done as we liked without consulting any one ; 
 the Bank of France could not have done so, for the 
 Republicans kept a strict watch upon every one 
 likely to be useful to the Prince-President. He 
 had not even the power to transfer a horse from 
 the stables of St. Cloud to his own. I have an 
 English groom in my service who was at St. Cloud
 
 UNDERCl RRENTS I >] 
 
 during the three years of the Presidency. One 
 day Louis Napoleon visited the stables in com 
 pany with an Englishman, and the stud-groom, 
 also .in Englishman, trotted out a splendid chest 
 nut to show them. 'Send that horse to me in 
 Paris,' said the President. ' I can't do that, sir,' 
 replied the man respectfully; 'the horse belongs 
 to the Republic' I am giving you the story in 
 the very words used to me. Besides, if the Prince 
 had all these millions of the Bank of France in his 
 cash-box — some say it was five, others ten — why 
 should he have wanted that miserable 50,000 francs 
 from London ? for although the draft was made 
 payable to Persigny, there is no doubt that the 
 money was intended for Louis Napoleon." 
 
 No, the army did not want bribing. After 
 three years of constant contact with the heir of 
 Napoleon I., it was ready to do any and every- 
 thing at that heir's bidding, seeing that only a 
 month after his advent to the Elysee, on the day 
 mentioned in the note about Changarnier, the mere 
 sight of him had aroused the troops' enthusiastic 
 cries of " Vive l'Empereur !" Their co-operation 
 was a foregone conclusion from that day forward, 
 but it wanted intelligent organizing and intelligent 
 leading, and some of the officers had to be shown 
 that Louis Napoleon was not such a "vile civilian" 
 as Cavaignac and his partisans had tried to make 
 him out; not such a "melancholy parrot" as 
 Changarnier delighted in calling him when he
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 79 
 
 found the melancholy parrot developing a tendency 
 to utter sentences other than those he had tried 
 to drum into him. 
 
 The task of proving to the army that this vile 
 civilian and melancholy parrot was " a gentleman 
 from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, 
 and every inch a king," as Lord Normanby, an 
 enemy, said of him, devolved upon Colonel 
 Fleury. Fleury did more than that. It is no 
 exaggeration to say that from the beginning 
 of '49 till the beginning of '52 he was the 
 virtual Minister for War, no matter who was 
 the holder of the portfolio nominally ; or to put 
 it in the pertinent words of Persigny, than whom 
 no man was more anxious to acknowledge the 
 services rendered by Fleury, " he was the Minister 
 for the Civil War we foresaw as the result of the 
 Prince's action." It was Fleury, who during these 
 three years selected the regiments to be succes- 
 sively quartered in Paris, and sent them back to 
 the provinces thoroughly imbued with the idea 
 that the imperial regime was the best for the 
 physical welfare of the army at home, for its pres- 
 tige both at home and abroad ; it was Fleury who 
 pointed out the officers for promotion, and recruited 
 Saint-Arnaud and Magnan in Algeria, a by no 
 means easy task in spite of the feeling of discon- 
 tent generally prevalent at the last public act 
 of Louis Philippe's fourth son. Truly, the sudden 
 departure of the Due d'Aumale, his quiet resig-
 
 i NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 nation of the governor-generalship of the colony 
 without his striking one Mow for the recovery of 
 father's throne had bred universal dissatisfac- 
 among the officers in Africa, but the re- 
 collection iA~ the Hue's splendid courage and 
 leadership remained ; and though the officers had 
 withdrawn their allegiance from him, they were, 
 perhaps, not quite prepared to transfer it at a 
 moment's notice to an " individual " — the term is 
 not mine — of whom in spite of the glamour of his 
 name, they knew comparatively nothing, who had, 
 moreover, been systematically vilified by the 
 two immediate successors to the Due, namely 
 < )hangarnier and Cavaignac. This feeling of 
 hostility to Louis Napoleon in the African 
 contingent of the French army only wore 
 off by degrees ; as late as 1852, there were still 
 some slight traces of it left l ; for the Prince- 
 President could not counteract it there by the charm 
 of his personal presence. Fleury, however, was not 
 only a valiant soldier and a thorough man of the 
 world, but a far from despicable organiser, and 
 what was better still, a skilful diplomatist. Even 
 Thiers had to admit this, though reluctantly, after 
 his journey to St. Petersburg at the end of 
 1870, when Fleury had vacated his post of am- 
 bassador only a few months. Alexander II. not 
 only referred constantly to Fleury's diplomatic 
 capacities, but almost plainly hinted that if a sense 
 
 1 See my Paris Note-Book, p. 313.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE Si 
 
 of a soldier's duty had not compelled Fleury's 
 departure, the sequel to Sedan might have been 
 different from what it was. To the outside world 
 of '48, however, Colonel Emile Fleury was 
 nothing more than a brilliant, dashing officer 
 with a splendid record for personal valour, but not 
 otherwise distinguished from a host of similarly 
 endowed African campaigners, except for a greater 
 fund of amiability and an utter absence of buck- 
 ram, brusqueness and conceit. It is doubtful 
 whether the newly elected President of the 
 Republic chose Major Fleury — he was only a 
 major then — as a member of his military house- 
 hold for any but his social qualities. Fleury was 
 a viveur, so was Louis Napoleon. Fleury was 
 fond of woman's society, Louis Napoleon was too 
 fond of it. Fleury was a constant visitor to the 
 green room of the Comedie Francaise and other 
 theatres. Louis Napoleon, while an exile in 
 London, was frequently seen at the wings, 
 especially when there was a pretty actress in the 
 cast. "It appears, commandant, that you go 
 behind the scenes," said the President shortly 
 after his accession when a discussion arose about 
 the prosperity of the House of Moliere. "You 
 must have some one to represent you worthily, 
 Monseigneur," was Fleury's ready answer. 
 
 But beneath the jovial and apparently careless 
 bon-vivant, Persigny had detected the sterling 
 clever emissary necessary to his purpose. It was 
 
 G
 
 i NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 Fleury who went to enlist Saint-Arnaud, but Per- 
 signy had probably pointed him out. The men who 
 helped to make the coup (Titat were all, with the 
 
 ptionofone (Dupin), without fear, for Morny, 
 though refusing to take the dose ol poison offered 
 to him by Persigny, had given proofs of his 
 courage on the battle-field ; only Fleury was 
 without reproach. " One cannot force a cathe- 
 dral door with a toothpick, and in a fight, 
 provided one knocks one's adversary down, the 
 ledger of the National Debt (le grand livre) 
 
 good as a Bible," said the Emperor one day 
 when referring to those who had helped him. I 
 have written the sentence in English, but it was 
 delivered half in English, half in French. It was 
 a habit of Louis Napoleon to use tw r o and some- 
 times three languages in as many sentences. " I 
 do not like my thoughts to sit fretting at home 
 because they do not happen to have the exact 
 clothes to go out in " ; he remarked on another 
 occasion, in explanation of this habit. Persigny 
 knew all about Saint-Arnaud without having been 
 told. Both men had led a chequered career. 
 Saint-Arnaud, though belonging to a very good 
 family, had been a commercial traveller, an actor, 
 a fencing-master, and Heaven knows what else 
 besides, before he entered the army a second 
 time. Persigny had followed many occupations, 
 and none for very long, after he exchanged the 
 dragoon's uniform for the dress of the St.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 83 
 
 Simoniens and the latter garb for that of every- 
 day life. Saint-Arnaud and Persigny had no 
 doubt met at some period of their lives, but it 
 would not have done for a simple civilian to 
 sound a general of brigade and Knight Com- 
 mander of the Legion of Honour on so dangerous 
 a subject as that of his co-operation in the 
 coup dUtat. So Persigny sent Fleury, whom, 
 as a negotiator, he knew to be immeasurably 
 superior to himself. " I can send Fleury into 
 a quagmire of intrigue with a pair of dancing- 
 pumps on ; he will come back as clean as a 
 new pin and with the object I want ; Persigny 
 with his jack-boots would get up to his waist 
 in the mud and bring back the object utterly 
 unfit for use. It is because the one would have 
 made the journey with his eyes and ears wide 
 open ; the other with his eyes fixed on the sky 
 watching for visions and only listening to the 
 promptings of his own fealty and loyalty to me. 
 Fleury always spoke and acted like the envoy 
 of a Caesar ; Persigny, in spite of himself, con- 
 veyed the impression of his having been sent by 
 a Catiline. Intrinsically there may not be much 
 difference between the motives of these two, but 
 history says there is, and history often spells 
 4 prejudice.' " This was Louis Napoleon's esti- 
 mate of the respective characters of his two 
 principal collaborateurs. 
 
 None of the precautions so essential in the case 
 
 G 2
 
 UNDERCURREN rS 0] 
 
 of Saint Arnaud were needed in that of Dr. Louis 
 VeVon. At that time, Dr. Vdron was the pro- 
 prietor of the Constitutionnely and what was better 
 still, from the Prince- President's view, the sole 
 arbiter of its policy. The influence of the 
 titutionnel itself can best be measured by a 
 couple of sentences from Lamartine with regard 
 to it. "The Republic has produced nothing 
 betterin the way of a daily paper. The Consti- 
 tutionnel is a clan of men of wit encamped one day 
 on the Boulevard, the next in the Rue de Rivoli, 
 watching the Revolution as it passes by, and look- 
 ing at men and things with the smile of dilettanti 
 and through an opera-glass." The chieftain's 
 name had long before that become a household 
 word with the Parisians, and Paris then as now 
 dictated to the rest of France. There had 
 been proprietors of nostrums before Dr. Louis 
 Yeron, but never such a one as he ; there is not a 
 single device in the way of advertising resorted to 
 by the present vendors of patent medicines that 
 was not suggested by him. The genius for boom- 
 ing his wares, himself and those whom he wished 
 to befriend, he brought to bear on the management 
 of the Revue de Paris and on the direction of the 
 Opera, though with different results. The peri- 
 odical was a comparative failure, simply because 
 the public were not quite ripe for exceedingly good 
 literature of a lighter kind, in monthly doses ; 
 secondly, because there sprang up in the mind, if
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 85 
 
 not in the heart of Dr. Veron himself, a formidable 
 rival for his affections, namely, the opera, which 
 in the course of five years he raised to a pitch of 
 prosperity such as it had never attained before nor 
 has attained since. Dr. Veron ought to have been 
 a happy man and have clung to the Muse 
 that virtually made him a prominent figure, by 
 the side of such celebrities as Meyerbeer and 
 Scribe, Auber and Adam, Hugo, Balzac and 
 Dumas, with whom, of course, no one attempted 
 or pretended to compare him intellectually, 
 but with whom, nevertheless, he associated on 
 a footing of social equality ; basking as far 
 as the public was concerned, in the reflected 
 glory of their fame. That however was not 
 sufficient for him. Thouq-h he commanded social 
 distinction long before similar distinction was ac- 
 corded to great operatic impresarios in other lands, 
 he flung operatic management to the winds to 
 become a factor in politics. He was bitten by the 
 mania which in those days gripped some of the 
 most brilliant luminaries of the literary firmament, 
 Lamartine, Hugo, Dumas, Sue, &c.,&c. Unfortu- 
 nately he chose to make his political ddbut under 
 the guidance of Thiers ; in other words, he 
 bought the Constitutionncl and made Thiers its 
 master, and Thiers rewarded him as he had always 
 rewarded, and rewarded to the end, all those who 
 made themselves the stepping-stones to his am- 
 bition ; with ingratitude and promises which were
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 not only never realised, but never intended to be 
 realised. 
 
 1 1 must not for one moment be supposed that 
 1 )r. Wron sat fretting over his political disappoint- 
 ments. IK' simply consoled himself for them by 
 making money, for making money was a supreme 
 enjoyment to him. But he was no miser. I knew 
 Dr. Wron personally during the last ten years of 
 his life. and. though too young to judge critically, I 
 remember many acts of his kindness to the poor. 
 Truly, as I remarked elsewhere, he did not do 
 good by stealth and blush to find it fame, but he 
 did good for all that. My uncles were frequent 
 visitors at his house, for though he had relin- 
 quished the active profession of a surgeon almost 
 at the outset of his career, he was fond of the 
 society of his former colleagues and proud of his 
 medical degree. I never saw Lord Brougham in 
 the flesh, but whenever I come across a portrait 
 of the eminent English statesman, my thoughts 
 always wander back to Dr. Veron. I dare say 
 the likeness exists to a great extent in my imagina- 
 tion. I have never tested it by putting their 
 portraits side by side. I doubt, however, whether 
 the two men had much in common mentally and 
 morally, except their overweening vanity. Lord 
 Brougham, I have been told, often made himself 
 ridiculous in private life ; I feel certain that Dr. 
 Yeron rarely if ever did either in private or in 
 public. Long before he flung Thiers overboard
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 87 
 
 he must have known that the latter was fur- 
 thering his own political ambition and none but 
 his own, by means of the Constitutionnel, but until 
 Veron felt himself capable of personally navi- 
 gating the ship, and until he had sighted the 
 America of his own ambition, he submitted to 
 Thiers' whimsical dictatorship. 
 
 That moment of independent action struck 
 shortly after the advent of Louis Napoleon to 
 the Presidency, to which advent the Constitutionnel 
 had contributed at the instigation of Thiers. He 
 had made up his mind to be Louis Napoleon's 
 successor at the expiration of the latter's four 
 years of office, the period provided for by the new 
 Constitution. In order to prove this, I append 
 one of the Emperor's remarks on the subject 
 to my uncle. " Shortly after my election to the 
 Presidency, Thiers asked me one morning what 
 official costume I was going to adopt, and when 
 he heard that I was wavering between the 
 uniform of a general of division and that of a 
 general of the National Guard, he said, after a 
 few moments, ' Take my advice, adopt neither 
 the one nor the other. I feel convinced that the 
 nation will be delighted to see its civic chief 
 magistrate adopt civilian dress. Besides, if you 
 were to adopt a military costume, your successor 
 might be awkwardly situated if he could not do the 
 same.' It was telling me in so many words," con- 
 cluded the Emperor, " ' I'll be succeeding you in
 
 UNDERCURREN rS OF 
 
 four years, and 1 cannot very well put myself In 
 a general's uniform.' " All these designs of Thiers 
 were knocked on the head one day by an article 
 in the Constitutionnel^ entitled " Two Dictator- 
 ships." It was written by the father of M. Paul 
 de Cassagnac, and simply announced that the Con- 
 stitutionncl \x,\<\ gone over with arms and baggage 
 to Thiers' enemy. 
 
 By that time the paper had already an 
 enormous circulation — of course for the France 
 of that day. Yeron increased it still further by 
 
 luping around him all the literary men of note. 
 He did more. He instituted a daily dinner at 
 his house and a weekly gala one, both of which 
 became the active centres of the propaganda of 
 the Napoleonic cause. In the course of these 
 chapters I shall be enabled to show the influence 
 of the drama, music, and pictorial art on the 
 history of France ; I need therefore not insist up- 
 on it here. In fact, except M. de Maupas, not 
 one of Louis Napoleon's collaborateurs has ever 
 denied Yeron's share in the coup detat ; and 
 much as I owe to Napoleon III.'s Minister of 
 Police, I feel bound to say that his evidence is 
 tainted with jealousy. M. de Maupas never 
 reconciled himself to the fact that there were 
 ten thousand men in France who could have 
 given the Prince-President the same intelligent 
 co-operation he gave, and that chance befriended 
 him in being selected for the task. There were
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 89 
 
 not a half-dozen Verons. General Magnan, 
 assuredly more clever as a soldier than was 
 M. de Maupas as a prefect of police, never 
 advanced such pretensions of being unique in 
 his way. Colonel de Beville, who performed 
 his share in the affair with a tact, determina- 
 tion and skill equal to those of General 
 Magnan, was as modest as he. The under- 
 currents of the Second Empire, on the threshold 
 of which we now stand, will show that save 
 Fleury, not a single one of Louis Napoleon's 
 henchmen was capable of improving what he had 
 helped to create, and least of all among them 
 M. de Maupas. But, like Louis Napoleon, I also 
 must change my dress while preparing to enter 
 the Tuileries. Henceforth, at any rate for a 
 considerable time to come, I accept the part of 
 Court chronicler ; not a slavishly blind one, the 
 reader may feel assured. Like Latour, the 
 famous eighteenth-century pastelist, I will en- 
 deavour to be impartial alike to master and 
 servants. If at the end the master should still 
 stand out as a great though very faulty man, it 
 will be because the servants were faulty without 
 having an atom of his greatness.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Among the notes written by my elder grand- 
 uncle within the twelvemonth preceding his death, 
 I find the following: " We went to see the arrival 
 of Alexander II. at the Northern Railway, and 
 while waiting- on the platform, caught a glimpse 
 of the Emperor. At that distance he looked ill 
 and careworn — more careworn than ill. I feel 
 convinced that among that chosen gathering 
 within, and that vast crowd without, the station, 
 there were not two men feeling more wretched 
 than the Czar of all the Russias and the Emperor 
 of the French, whom to honour these crowds had 
 assembled. But I fancy that the Emperor feels 
 even more wretched than the Czar, for although 
 they both know that they may at any moment 
 become the victims of assassins, the latter is 
 borne up by the knowledge of being hemmed in 
 by a serried phalanx of blindly devoted friends, 
 while the former is painfully aware of being sur- 
 rounded by envy and intrigue. ' I can count the
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF THE SECOND EMPIRE 91 
 
 friends who would sacrifice their lives for me on 
 the fingers of one hand, and still have two fingers 
 left to snap at my enemies,' the Emperor said the 
 other day in a tone of bravado which, however 
 did not deceive me or himself as to its underlying 
 bitterness. I think the Emperor is mistaken in 
 the number of those who would fight for him as 
 long as they had a drop of blood left. Conneau and 
 Rouher, and half-a-dozen others I could name, 
 would stand by him, like Fleury, Persigny, and 
 Princesse Mathilde, no matter what happened. 
 At the same time, there is no doubt that since Moc- 
 quard's death x he feels more acutely than he did 
 before the envy and constant antagonism of which 
 he is the object on the part of Jerome. Mocquard 
 was the only one who could manage that cur (ce 
 chien hargneux), for he was his equal in knowledge, 
 and did not mind flinging his knowledge over- 
 
 1 Francois Mocquard was Louis Napoleon's private secretary 
 from the moment the latter became a candidate for the Presidency 
 until his (Mocquard's) death. My grand-uncle's estimate of his 
 mental attainments was somewhat exaggerated ; for though a very 
 talented lawyer and a clever literary man, he was not, intellectually, 
 Prince Jerome's equal. My uncles' partiality was due to their 
 sincere friendship for Mocquard, who was a constant guest at our 
 home, and whom I liked almost as well as did my uncles. The 
 origin of these three men's attachment to each other was their 
 common and fervent admiration of Queen Hortense, and their 
 unbounded sympathy with her third son. I am under the im- 
 pression that the substance of a great many of my uncles' notes 
 relating to things absolutely unknown even to the Emperor's 
 immediate entourage, was communicated by Mocquard, though I 
 have no absolute evidence to that effect. I shall avail myself 
 frequently of them, especially in this chapter.
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 board to come to close quarters with him physically. 
 
 I f Mocquard had had his way, he would have made 
 
 nd of him seventeen years ago, and Louis 
 
 n would have been rid of the most 
 
 cowardly and at the same time most, unscrupulous 
 « army he had had in lu's life." The last sentence 
 of this note must be taken literally, for it is an 
 absolute fact that on the morning of the 7th of 
 December, 1S51, hence on the Sunday after the 
 coup (ft fat, Mocquard would have shot clown 
 Plon-Plon like a mad dog if the Prince-President 
 had not placed himself in front of his cousin at 
 the risk of his own life. The incident is abso- 
 lutely unknown, but I have chapter and verse for 
 what I state. The Prince-President was very 
 indignant, and ordered Mocquard to apologise. 
 Mocquard not only refused to do so, but turned 
 on his heel and left the room. When Plon-Plon 
 was gone, the Prince went to Mocquard and 
 repeated his order — " unless," he added, ' ; you 
 can give me a valid reason for this utterly un- 
 provoked attack." " I will neither apologise nor 
 give you a reason, Monseigneur," replied Moc- 
 quard firmly ; " sooner than do either, I would 
 leave you and the Elysee for ever. But mark 
 this, the time will come when you will be sorry 
 for my miscarried attempt." The Prince did not 
 insist, and to the day of his death he never 
 knew what had goaded Mocquard into that ap- 
 parently unprovoked assault. Mocquard himself
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 93 
 
 kept the secret of it for many years, but at the time 
 of Plon-Plon's marriage with Victor Emmanuel's 
 daughter he told it to my grand-uncle, and after 
 the above particulars, gave him the reason for the 
 attack ; pledging him to secrecy only with regard 
 to it, and not with regard to the cause. " I 
 meant to kill him," said Mocquard, "and have 
 been sorry ever since that I did not succeed. 
 From the Tuesday till the Friday morning 
 (December 2 — 5, 1851), he was seen everywhere 
 except at the Elysee, by the side of the cousin 
 to whom he already owed so much. When I 
 say everywhere, I mean among the adversaries 
 of the Prince. And when, on that Friday 
 morning all further resistance seemed obviously 
 hopeless even to the most determined of the 
 Prince's adversaries, Plon-Plon girded his loins 
 for another effort. He actually went to the 
 offices of the Presse, and in conjunction with 
 Emile de Girardin drew up a kind of manifesto 
 inciting people to further revolt. While the 
 matter was being put in type, Plon-Plon waited 
 in an adjoining room. He was correcting the 
 proofs when two members of Girardin's staff came 
 in and told him that the army was master of the 
 situation. Thereupon Girardin informed them 
 of what was being done in the next room, and 
 before he had ceased speaking, Plon-Plon came 
 in, proofs in hand. ' Then you mean to say,' he 
 exclaimed angrily, ' that you accept the whole
 
 UNDERCURR] NTS 0] 
 
 affair as an accomplished fact — that you decline 
 u> sign this protest?' 'And you, 1 was the 
 counter-question of one of the new-comers, 
 'and you, will you sign the protest?' 'That's 
 different, my position forbids me doing so.' ' In 
 that case,' remarked Girardin quietly, taking the 
 proofs from Plon-Plon's hands, ' in that case, 
 there is no need for these proofs, for I was under 
 the impression that you were going to sign at 
 the head of us all.' Saying which, he tore up 
 the proofs and (lung the pieces into the waste- 
 paper basket. I have got them in my possession 
 with the corrections and two additional sentences 
 in Plon-Plon's handwriting. I have had them 
 since the evening of that day. It does not 
 matter how I got them. I pasted the pieces 
 together, and keep them under lock and key." 
 
 The suppression of that one fact could have 
 made but little difference to Louis Napoleon's 
 estimate of Plon-Plon's character, nor did it. 
 The Prince knew that his cousin and his uncle 
 would shrink from nothing to gain their ends — 
 namely, the imperial crown for the former — and the 
 knowledge embittered his life from the moment he 
 set foot in the Tuileries. Until then his life had 
 been perfectly safe from their attacks, for they had 
 nothing to gain by his death and everything to 
 lose. It is generally supposed that the new 
 Emperor endeavoured to surround himself with 
 the noblesse of the old regime from a feeling of
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 95 
 
 vanity, and for the purpose of conciliating that 
 noblesse. Nothing is further from the truth, at 
 any rate, while the Emperor was a bachelor. To 
 begin with, Napoleon III. was the least vain of 
 all men in this respect ; if anything, his vanity 
 lay the other way ; he prided himself upon being 
 a parvenu among the crowned heads of Europe, 
 and somewhat ostentatiously applied the epithet 
 to himself. Secondly, he felt convinced that no 
 amount of favour and croodwill shown to a 
 fraction of the Faubourg St. Germain would 
 insure him either the political or social counten- 
 ance of the rest. But he thoroughly agreed 
 with the axiom of Napoleon I., " Ou'il n'y a que 
 la noblesse qui sache servir," and he wished to 
 take his Mamelucks, his Roustans, from among 
 them. " I believe in my star, but I am afraid of 
 the satellites," he said one day to my uncle, 
 shortly after he had taken up his residence at 
 the Tuileries. My uncle endeavoured to talk 
 him out of it, albeit that he himself believed the 
 fear to be justified, and then the Emperor told 
 him a story, which if invented by a Palais- Royal 
 farce-writer would stamp that writer as one of 
 the greatest masters of his craft, though at the 
 same time the public might object that their 
 credulity had been put to too severe a test. 
 
 "You remember," said the Emperor, "that 
 on the 2nd December [1S52] I removed to the 
 Tuileries for good and that there was a State
 
 UNDERCURREN rS OF 
 
 dinner in the evening. Norneed I remind you oi 
 the debt of gratitude I owe to my cousin the 
 Princesse Mathilde. Well, I considered it my 
 duty to acknowledge that debt semi-publicly, and 
 took the opportunity of doing so that night. 
 Through an oversight of the reporters, the papers 
 reproduced the spirit, perhaps, though not the 
 substance of my words. I took her in to dinner, 
 and before we sat down, I said, loud enough to be 
 heard by everybody, ' My dear Mathilde, for the 
 present your place is on my right hand ; when you 
 vacate it, it will be to take the one still nearer to 
 my heart.' The papers had it, ' My dear Mathilde, 
 you will take the first position here, on my right 
 hand until there is an empress.' In reality, there 
 was not a pin to choose between the significance 
 of the two sentences. The moment I had spoken 
 the words, I noticed a scowl on my uncle's face, 
 and during the whole of the dinner, he scarcely 
 addressed a syllable to me, and answered me gruffly 
 when I spoke to him. Next morning, Fleury 
 came in as usual, before I had seen any one, 
 for Mocquard had nothing special to com- 
 municate to me that day. I have always 
 considered a few minutes' chat with Fleury 
 as a stimulant to help me through with the 
 business of the day. Fleury has got a tell-tale 
 face, and the moment I looked at him, I knew 
 that something funny had happened. ' Funny, 
 indeed, sire,' he said, in answer to my remark ;
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 97 
 
 ' I doubt, however, whether your Majesty will 
 think it as funny as I do. Your Majesty's uncle 
 has been t simply foaming at the mouth since last 
 night, and goes about yelling that you have no 
 business to marry, that such a marriage would 
 interfere with his son's rights. Just before he 
 left, he held forth to me for about ten minutes. 
 I was under the impression at first that he was 
 joking, but I assure your Majesty that he was ter- 
 ribly in earnest. At last I succeeded in putting in a 
 word. " But assuredly," I said, " your Majesty 
 does not expect the Emperor to remain single 
 all the days of his life ? " " That's just what I do 
 expect," he shrieked ; " for my nephew is as much 
 fit to marry as were Louis XIII., Louis XVI., and 
 Peter 1 1 1, of Russia." With this he turned on his 
 heel, leaving me absolutely breathless with aston- 
 ishment. I did not know whether to laugh or to 
 be indignant ; but laughter got the upper hand, 
 for I may frankly confess that the idea of compar- 
 ing your Majesty as a would-be husband with the 
 somewhat physically deficient spouses of Anne 
 of Austria, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, and Marie- 
 Antoinette was too much for my risible nerves. 
 I stood absolutely roaring with laughter in the 
 middle of the room. Since then, I have been 
 thinking what a capital comedy the idea would 
 make, if properly worked out and the scene laid 
 among the aristocracy, or better still, among the 
 wealthier middle classes. Just imagine, sire, the 
 
 11
 
 (ERCURREN rS OF 
 
 havoc that might be wrought by a man, a com- 
 paratively young man, like your Majesty, whose 
 heirs, for purposes <>f their own, had spread the 
 report that he was "a saint malgre lui" he being 
 all the while "a jovial sinner par conviction " ; just 
 fancy a man going about with the reputation of a 
 Louis XIII., and the appetites of that monarch's 
 father and that monarch's son rolled into one.' 
 
 •• Thus far the Hmpcror's remarks," says this 
 lengthy note. "The most curious part of the whole 
 affair, though, is this. The Emperor seemed en- 
 tirely ignorant of the sequel to his uncle's contemp- 
 tible aspersions, and I had not the courage to en- 
 lighten him, lest I should still further endanger 
 the already sufficiently strained relations between 
 the ex- King of Westphalia and the head of the 
 family. Fleury's conception of the play to be 
 founded on the subject was partly realized in a pro- 
 logue a few days after its communication to the 
 Emperor. I was dining with Veron on the 6th De- 
 cember in the company of Velpeau, Ricord,Tardieu 
 and Trousseau, w T hen Veron happened to say that 
 the sooner the Emperor got married, the better 
 it would be for the welfare of the country and 
 the stability of the dynasty. Including our host, 
 we were nine at table ; four of us, myself among 
 the number, cordially agreed with Dr. Veron, but 
 our four eminent colleagues kept absolutely silent, 
 and apparently by common consent. This was 
 the more remarkable, inasmuch as the subject had
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 99 
 
 been started quite spontaneously. Nor were they 
 seated together, and they had certainly not dis- 
 cussed the matter between their arrival and our 
 sitting down to dinner. Their silence was so 
 puzzling that Dr. Veron appealed directly to 
 Velpeau. ' What is your opinion, cher maitre ? ' 
 he asked. ' Ma foi/ was the answer, ' I am 
 reluctant to give an opinion. The Emperor's 
 marriage would undoubtedly be beneficial to the 
 country and consolidate the dynasty, provided ' — 
 and here he paused — ' provided it were blessed 
 with children. But will it be so blessed? If 
 I am to believe all I have heard for the last 
 three or four days, it will not be thus blessed, 
 unless ' — and here he paused a second time — 
 4 unless the foulest aspersion that has ever been 
 cast upon a man's virility is positively without 
 foundation.' Ricord, Trousseau, and Tardieu 
 had nodded their heads in approval while 
 Velpeau was speaking. To cut the story short, 
 the ex-King of Westphalia's assertion as to 
 his nephew's unfitness for marriage had already 
 reached the ears of the foremost members of 
 the Medical Faculty, and they believed in it." 1 
 I am not quite prepared to endorse my uncle's 
 opinion with regard to the Emperor's ignorance 
 
 1 Until the birth of the Prince Imperial, the belief was firmly 
 shared by numberless Frenchmen of all classes; and even 
 Iiismarck was not proof against it. Those who care to read 
 between the lines of his Political Correspondence of 1855 must 
 inevitably come to this conclusion. 
 
 II 2
 
 UNDER) TURIN is OF 
 
 of these rumours. On the contrary. In spite ol 
 my uncle's assumption of that ignorance, I am in- 
 clined to believe that these rumours had reached 
 the Emperor's ear even at the time oi the con- 
 versation recorded above. Nay, more, I feel 
 convinced that these rumours prompted his 
 marriage with Mdlle. Eugenie de Montijo. I say 
 prompted, not hastened ; for every note on the 
 subject in my possession goes to prove that 
 until that moment the idea — mind the mere 
 idea — of placing Mdlle. de Montijo by his 
 side on the imperial throne had not as much as 
 entered his mind. We have heard a good deal 
 about the violent passion of Louis Napoleon 
 for the supremely beautiful Spanish girl from 
 the moment he set eyes on her — which must 
 have been before he was President of the 
 Republic, for they both stayed at adjacent 
 hotels in the Place Vendome. The passion 
 was no doubt a fact, for Louis Napoleon had 
 always a great amount of love-passion lying 
 and only waiting for investment. In that 
 respect he was unlike Goethe and like Jean- 
 Jacques Rousseau. The author of Wilhelm 
 Meister was for ever trying to work up a love- 
 passion for an object ; the author of La Nouvelle 
 Helo'isc was for ever endeavouring to find an object 
 for his love-passion. Jean-Jacques, however, con- 
 tented himself with one investment at a time ; Louis 
 Napoleon, on the other hand, had nearly always
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 101 
 
 " a great many irons in the fire." In after years, 
 Bismarck called him a " a crowned Werther " ; the 
 appellation minus the adjective would have applied 
 to Louis Napoleon throughout his life. The 
 "violent passion" he had conceived for Mdlle. de 
 Montijo did not prevent the conception of an almost 
 equally violent passion for Mdlle. Madeleine 
 Brohan, who shortly before that had made her 
 first appearance at the Comedie Franchise ; while 
 concurrently with the existence of these two 
 passions, the victim suffering from them was " on 
 ne peut mieux " with Rachel, Miss Howard being 
 at that period " la maitresse en titre." The 
 latter, we may take it, had to be satisfied with 
 the crumbs that fell from the lord's table — unless 
 the board happened to be spread in the provinces, 
 on which occasions she was the sole and therefore 
 principal guest — et pour cause — although the 
 entertainment was a secret one. Not so secret, 
 however, as to prevent the particulars of it leaking 
 out and offending the " unco' guid," as was the case 
 during the presidential journey to Tours in 1S49. 
 Accommodation had to be found for the already 
 numerous suite of the newly-elected Prince- Presi- 
 dent, and the house selected for Miss Howard was 
 that of M. Andre, the Receiver-General, a strict 
 Protestant, whose family and himself were tem- 
 porarily absent from the capital of Touraine and < in 
 a visit to the Pyrenees. M. Andre considered that 
 his home had been sullied by the presence of "such
 
 - OF 
 
 — th - on marks are not mil 
 
 :. winding up his letter as 
 
 " Have we. then, perchance, gone back 
 
 •period ressesof Kings flaunted 
 
 In the various cities of France?" 
 
 tt r • .5 addressed to the then Prime 
 
 n Barrot who. like Thiers, aspired 
 
 -jcceed Louis Napoleon as President of the 
 
 Second Republic. butwho had not the pluck to show 
 
 it the man for whom it was really intended. 
 
 Barrot, his brother, who throughout 
 
 - Xapoleon's career was a sincere friend, and 
 
 had defended him before the Court of Peers after 
 
 Boulogne, when his elder brother had declined to 
 
 do so, placed the epistle before the President. 
 
 President penned an answer to it, ostensibly 
 
 in a letter to the Prime Minister himself, but with 
 
 a request that a copy of it should be forwarded to 
 
 ncharitable Receiver-General. I need only 
 
 .- one sentence from it. After reminding M. 
 
 Andr r words in connection with " the 
 
 :an tak Adultery," the writer went on: 
 
 "As for myself, I plead guilty to having looked to 
 
 affection of which my heart stands 
 
 Odilon Barrot, who had not had the 
 
 sent the indictment, shirked send- 
 
 : the defendant's plea to the accuser 
 
 ;ne of extenuating 
 
 not a denial of guilt. 
 
 er, was a specious one, for
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 
 
 it is no libel on Louis Xapoleon's memo.- t say 
 that those illicit ties were mostly slip-knots wl 
 now and then, as in the case of Miss Howard, 
 threatened to become halters. Like Francois I 
 and Henri IV.. Louis Napoleon was " entiche de 
 femmes et de corps et d'esprit ; " like Francois I. 
 he would, had it been feasible, have roamed the 
 streets of Paris after dark in search of adv 
 without a sigh of regret for the pomp and splendour 
 of the Tuileries which from the very beginning 
 irksome to him. inasmuch as they interfered 
 his theory of "free selection," and his ideas 
 
 of " physical affiniti - For we must not . 
 ourselves ; love — I cannot or will not. find another 
 word — with Louis Xapoleon was merely an affair 
 ;: the senses: a practical illustration of part of 
 Chamfor: s cynical definition of it — " le contact de 
 deux epidermes. This is - rue that, 
 
 in after years, the lawful spouse could invariablv 
 bring him back from the too ardent pursuit of a 
 strange goddess by merely adopting the ta : 
 said to have been adopted by Phryn "ore the 
 Areopagus. For this, as for all other thin,.- I 
 may have occasion to stal . 
 give chapter and verse. 
 
 Louis Napolecr. then as [ha sai :idhave 
 
 liked to roam tl sti ts Paris 
 search of adventures. Ofcours as . eror 
 
 of the French en as President of the Republic, 
 
 such perambulations in the fairly-well ligi
 
 UND1 RCI KK1N rS I IF 
 
 thoroughfares of the capital were impossible ; 
 but during his short stay there in [83] when 
 he was altogether unknown by sight to the 
 Parisians, he could indulge in his mania to his 
 heart's content. Like Francois I., Louis Napo- 
 did not care whether the woman who 
 attracted his attention was a duchess or a dairy- 
 maid, provided she came up to the standard of 
 beauty he had in his own mind! If anything, he 
 preferred la bourgeoise and la grisette — there 
 %risettes\xi those days — for " all women yield 
 through curiosity rather than from passion, and the 
 courtship of a man of the world is a novelty to 
 the woman of the middle and lower classes," he 
 said on one occasion. It was his mother's dictum, 
 when Queen of Holland ; " in the eyes of the 
 'geois there is no such a being as an ugly 
 duchess," applied to the female members of 
 that section of society. " Since our French 
 dandies have begun to dress and to behave 
 like grooms, in imitation of the English aris- 
 tocracy," he said, years later on, ''our grandes 
 dames no longer elope with their grooms ; there 
 is not sufficient contrast between them and their 
 husbands.' There was a considerable deal of 
 method in Louis Napoleon's amorous madness. 
 Xow and again, though, and the method notwith- 
 standing, it led him into terrible scrapes, as we 
 shall perceive throughout these pages. It led him 
 into terrible scrapes, just as Napoleon I.'s
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 105 
 
 amorous propensities would have done, if he 
 had not constantly acted upon a maxim of 
 his own coining, to the effect that " Love is the 
 occupation of the idler, the diversion of the 
 warrior, and a danger to the sovereign." 
 
 In 1S31 Louis Napoleon, in spite of his pre- 
 occupations about the French throne, was virtually 
 an idler — a flaneur — though evidently not the kind 
 of flaneur so tersely described by Balzac, the 
 flaneur whose apparently idle lounging is a science, 
 viz. the gastronomy of the eyes. For it is very 
 doubtful whether the flaneur proper as distinct 
 from the literary man and painter would have 
 attempted to cultivate that science in the Ouartier 
 Mouffetard and round about the Place Maubert 
 sixty-five years ago, when that neighbourhood was 
 even less savoury than it is now. And yet it was 
 to that unsavoury neighbourhood that the twenty- 
 three-year-old Prince repaired nightly for more 
 than a month before the disturbance on the Place 
 Vendome (May 5th, 1831) ; it was in a thieves' 
 den that he spent most of his time while Louis 
 Philippe, who had given him and his mother per- 
 mission to stay for a short period in Paris, was 
 under the impression that he was ill in bed, 
 although Casimir-Perier (the grandfather of the 
 late President of the Republic) knew better ; for 
 he had given orders to the Prefect of Police not 
 to lose sight of Hortense's son. Young Louis 
 Napoleon was arrested on the 7th or 8th of May,
 
 UNDERCURREN rS 01 
 
 and conveyed to Sainte-Pelagie. That much is 
 certain, for Raspail, the eminent savant, saw him 
 there and gave a description of his mode of life. 
 But the particulars of this arrest never fully 
 transpired; beyond the fact that the Prince was 
 not arrested at home, the outer world knows 
 nothing up to the present day, and but for the 
 following note, I should have been just as ignorant. 
 Whether I have read the note aright or not is a 
 question I dare scarcely decide for myself. 
 
 '• The news of Eugene Sue's death reached here 
 a couple of days ago, and of course, the papers 
 are full of biographical articles and reminiscences. 
 In spite of all these, I question whether more than 
 a dozen people are personally affected by his dis- 
 appearance. But Veron, whom I met yesterday, 
 was decidedly upset, albeit that the cause of his 
 emotion is, to say the least, curious. 'To think,' 
 he said in a subdued tone, ' that not one person in 
 a thousand will give Sue a second thought after 
 he, the individual, has read the articles about him. 
 And yet it seems but yesterday that the whole of 
 France was ringing with his name, that people 
 were absolutely frantic to know what he ate and 
 drank, how he dressed and spent his time. If 
 such is the case with a man of his talents, what 
 will it be with men of less talent, but who, never- 
 theless, have also tried to benefit their fellow- 
 creatures ? ' And he pulled a very doleful face, at 
 which I burst out laughing, for I could plainly see
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 107 
 
 that he was thinking of his own posthumous 
 reputation. He evidently read my thoughts, for 
 he smiled. 'Ah, well,' he remarked, 'we all 
 have our little weaknesses.' Then he suddenly 
 added, ' I wonder what the Emperor thinks ? ' 
 ' The Emperor ? ' I repeated in surprise ; ' the 
 Emperor has no need to regret or to mourn for 
 Eugene Sue, for Sue certainly did not behave in a 
 friendly way to him. Even if Sue's republican 
 convictions were as strong as he represented them 
 to be, which I doubt, he ought to have remained 
 silent at the coup d'dtat! 1 ' I was not thinking 
 about that,' replied Veron ; ' I was wondering how 
 he takes the death of the novelist who immortalised 
 him as Prince Rodolphe in Les My st er e s de Paris? 
 I stood staring at him. ' I see, you do not under- 
 stand,' he said. ' Come along, and I will tell you.' 
 We sat down at Tortoni's, and then he told me 
 that when Louis Napoleon was arrested in May, 
 
 1 My uncle was right. Eugene Sue was the godson of Louis- 
 Napoleon's mother and of her brother, Eugene de Beauharnais, 
 whose Christian name he subsequently took, although it was not 
 given to him at his baptism. The fact of his being the godson of 
 some of Louis Napoleon's relations ought to have imposed a certain 
 reserve with regard to the Prince, even if his, Sue's, socialistic 
 tendencies, Republican opinions, and sympathy with the poor had 
 been less suspected, and justly suspected, than they were. (See An 
 Englishman in Paris, vol. I. ch. II.) Even the people in whose 
 interest he professed to act made fun of him when he became a can- 
 didate for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies. But on the strength 
 of his two great novels, Sue determined to pose as a benefactor 
 to suffering humanity, although he himself had not the least inten- 
 tion of assuming such a role when he began Les Mystires de Paris. 
 Accordingly, when on the 2nd December, 1851, Moray placed his
 
 I NDERCURRENTS I M 
 
 1831, he was not only not arrested at home, but 
 that he wore a blouse and a cloth cap at the time. 
 • l\i the best of my belief,' Ve'ron went on, ' it was 
 on the outskirts of the Quartier Moufifetard, but 
 of that I will not be certain, for Sue, who told me, 
 was not certain himself.' ' Then it was Sue who 
 told you?' I asked. ' How did he know ? ' 'That 
 I cannot tell you, I do not know ; but I am under 
 the impression that he got the story at the time 
 from ex-Queen Hortense herself.' I remembered 
 that in spite of Sue's tuft-hunting in the Faubourg 
 St. Germain in the early thirties, he went to see 
 his godmother once or twice ; it was not quite so 
 clear to me why Queen Hortense should have 
 told him the particulars of her son's arrest, and 
 I pointed this out to Veron. ' The same thought 
 struck me, and I can only account for it in one 
 way,' replied Veron. ' Part of the story was 
 sure to leak out — these things always do ; for 
 when Louis Napoleon was transferred from the 
 Palais de Justice to Sainte-Pelagie, he still wore 
 
 name on the list of Deputies to be arrested, and when the 
 President put his pen through the name, Sue, still determined to 
 enact the victim, voluntarily constituted himself a prisoner at the 
 Fort de Vanves. When the " Bill of Exile" was promulgated, he 
 was again disappointed, for the President had effaced his name a 
 second time. Sue professed himself offended at this clemency, and 
 went into exile of his own accord. As may be seen from all this, 
 Louis Napoleon remembered that Sue was his mother's godson, 
 Sue did not. Louis Napoleon's behaviour in this instance bears 
 out the words of Persigny, quoted in a previous chapter, namely, 
 that Louis Napoleon gave his affection to people irrespective of 
 its bein'f returned or not.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 109 
 
 the clothes in which he was taken. The officials 
 of the prison must have seen the Prince in them, 
 and they had no incentive to hold their tongue. 
 Queen Hortense, I need scarcely tell you, was too 
 clever not to have anticipated this ; so in order to 
 explain her son's disguise, and to find at the same 
 time a colourable excuse for his constant excur- 
 sions to the Ouartier Mouffetard, she invented 
 the story of his having gone there to get materials 
 for his contemplated studies on pauperism. I 
 feel certain that at the time Sue himself was 
 taken in by the story, and when ten years later, i.e. 
 after the publication of the opening chapters of 
 of Les Mysteres in the Ddbats, M. Considerant, 
 the editor of La Democratic Pacifique, gave him, 
 as it were, the cue as to the aim of his novel, he 
 took the hint, and made Rodolphe a philanthropist, 
 a redresser of wrongs, and so forth. Honestly 
 speaking, I do not believe for one moment that 
 Sue started his novel with such an idea. He no 
 doubt recollected the incident of the Prince's arrest, 
 and from the very outset had the Prince in his 
 mind's eye when sketching Rodolphe, but that 
 was all. Nor do I believe that the Prince went 
 to the Ouartier Mouffetard for philanthropic pur- 
 poses. Some years ago — it must have been 
 shortly after the attempt at Boulogne — I went 
 twice to the Ouartier Mouffetard. It was during 
 the trial of Prince Louis, and the illustrated papers, 
 in spite of the prohibition of the Government,
 
 I MM K( I RREN I - i '1 
 
 .1 more or less striking portraits 
 ; ( )anler who took me there, and at 
 i nd \ isit he stopped to speak to a woman 
 bout twenty-eight or thirty, who, in spite of 
 vident traces of debauch, was still very hand- 
 Suddenly he took from his pocket the 
 .lii of Prince Louis, and, after having torn off 
 the line ai the 1 >< >ttom, showed it to her. ' Do you 
 kn<»w this young man ?' he asked. The woman's 
 iitively started from their sockets. ' Mais 
 le connais, 1 she gasped; ' c'est mon 
 amoureux ; il n'est done pas mort ? Oh, comme 
 Irais le revoir.' ' Ce n'est pas lui,' said 
 Canler softly; 'c'est quelqu'un qui lui res- 
 semble. Votre amoureux est mort en prison.' 
 That Nam»- night Canler told me how years before 
 id discovered accidentally that this was the 
 woman who had attracted Louis Napoleon to the 
 rtier Mouffetard in '31." 1 
 I have given this long note for many reasons, 
 tive of its interest as an item in the his- 
 tory o| fiction. I wished to prove by something 
 than men- assertion that in at least one 
 ect Louis Xapoleon was like Francois I., i.e., 
 in the fascination the latter exercised over women. 
 
 'anlcr published some interesting memoirs in the sixties ; 
 
 : incident related above is not so much as mentioned. It 
 
 h, that Canler was not only an ardent 
 
 it a sincere admirer of Louis Napoleon personally, 
 
 1, probably considered it more loyal to hold his pen. 
 
 ime time I feel convinced that Dr. Vcron, who had no 
 
 :e the Emperor, did not invent the incident.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE in 
 
 Moreover, the note, coupled with the utterances of 
 the Prince immediately preceding it, will convey a 
 fair idea of his moral estimate of the female sex 
 in general. To the full as ill-favoured by nature as 
 Mirabeau, Louis Napoleon had been just as suc- 
 cessful with women, and in many instances with 
 women of standing in society. At the very 
 moment when Mdlle. de Montijo appeared on 
 the scene, a woman was to a certain extent 
 supplying the first sinews for the war the 
 guerdon of which was to be the imperial crown 
 of France. And, in spite of all that has 
 been said, Miss Howard was neither born in a 
 garret nor bred in a kitchen. She may not have 
 been a gentlewoman by birth and breeding in the 
 best acceptation of the word ; but she was by no 
 means the utterly vulgar, ignorant, and debased 
 creature people have tried to make her out. She 
 was the courtesan de grande facture et de grande 
 allure, not highly educated, perhaps, but with a 
 natural charm and tact that made up for the lack 
 of education. Great statesmen did not hesitate 
 to solicit her help when Louis Napoleon even as 
 President became inaccessible to them ; great 
 statesmen's emissaries did not consider it super- 
 fluous to sound her with regard to the new 
 Emperor's opinions on very weighty measures. 
 If my statements on these points are challenged, 
 I will give proofs which it will be difficult indeed 
 to controvert. She had hosts of wealthy ad-
 
 UNDERCURREN is OF 
 
 mirers, and was possessed <>i considerable means. 
 She sacrificed both admirers and means for the 
 man who had accosted her one night as she was 
 leaving a friend's house, just as he had accosted the 
 girl belongingto the dregs of the Paris population. 
 The sum she lent Louis Napoleon was far short 
 o\ the legendary eight millions of francs, but it 
 amounted to more than ,£40,000. And let it be 
 remembered that, by M iss I loward'sown admission 
 not one cent of that money was borrowed or lent 
 under a promise of marriage, although the con- 
 trary has been so often asserted as to make one 
 tired of contradicting it. Miss Howard was too 
 sensible a woman to have ever fostered such a 
 hope. In her bitterest denunciations of Louis 
 Napoleon she never taxed him with having 
 deceived her in this way. "The awkward, sal- 
 low-faced, lank-haired adventurer was as much 
 a hero to her as was the Moor to Brabantio's 
 daughter," said Alexandre Dumas the elder one 
 day. " But here the likeness ceased," he added, 
 "for Miss Howard was not a Desdemona ; hence 
 she did not see the necessity of eloping with or 
 marrying her hero in order to make him all her 
 own. When I say ' to make him all her own,' I 
 am speaking figuratively ; she knew his habitual 
 inconstancy too well. Nevertheless she loved 
 her ' Poleon ' as ardently as Desdemona loved 
 Othello." 
 
 Louis Napoleon, though not a vain man, was
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 113 
 
 well aware of the passion he had inspired. 
 His previous as well as actual love affairs — the 
 use of the plural is necessary — must, moreover, 
 have convinced him that his powers of fascination 
 were not on the wane. What more natural, in 
 his case, than that he should wish to test them 
 on the young Spanish girl whom accident had 
 thrown across his path, and who was unquestion- 
 ably one of the most beautiful women of her time. 
 Says La Fontaine : 
 
 Filles de sang royal ne se declarent gueres 
 
 Tout se passe dans leur coeur, ce qui les fasche bien, 
 
 Car elles sont de chair ainsi que les bergeres. 
 
 If ever a man knew these three lines by heart, 
 and felt inclined to act upon the strong hint 
 conveyed in them, it was assuredly Louis 
 Napoleon. Besides, he was, above all, a 
 thorough worldling, and as such may have enter- 
 tained a strong suspicion that it was not al- 
 together accident that had thrown Mdlle. de 
 Montijo across his path, but that in view of his 
 well-known susceptibility to woman's charms, she 
 wished to try her powers upon him. Frankly 
 speaking, Mdlle. de Montijo's surroundings would 
 have warranted the suspicion. There is a 
 French proverb which bids men to beware of 
 the young girl whose cradle has been a travelling 
 trunk, and whose finishing school a tabic if hole. 
 Though still very young when Louis Napoleon 
 first met her, Mdlle. de Montijo had already 
 
 1
 
 1 1 ; l MM RCURREN rS I 'I 
 
 travelled a good deal ; the best hotels in the 
 larger capitals of Europe had sheltered her and 
 her mother within their walls, at a time' when 
 young girls of her station and of her faith were 
 generally entrusted to the care of some religious 
 sisterhood to fit them for their future social 
 duties. The tame of her beauty had spread 
 through many lands ; she rarely appeared any- 
 where without a throng of admirers, but she 
 might have said, with Esther Eccles in Caste, 
 " There is not a husband among" them " ; for 
 though many aspired to the pleasure of her 
 society, none aspired to the honour of her hand. 
 Her elder sister had married a descendant of the 
 Due de Berwick, for whom the ancient dukedom 
 of Alva had been revived. " The Due d'Albe 
 is a lucky man," said an habitue 1 of the green- 
 room of the Comedie Francaise to Augustine 
 Brohan, when discussing the marriage. "Very 
 lucky indeed," was the answer, " for the Comtesse 
 de Montijo might have made him marry both her 
 daughters by a special dispensation of the Pope." 
 " But that would be impossible, mademoiselle." 
 Nothing is impossible to Madame la Comtesse 
 de Montijo where the happiness of her daughters 
 is concerned." "Yes, I am told she is a very 
 clever woman, and that she has travelled a 
 good deal." " Yes, and never without her 
 samples. She is like the mother of the Gracchi, 
 always showing her jewels, and Prosper Merimee
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 115 
 
 has been deputed to furnish a fresh description 
 of their virtues every now and again. He ought 
 to be able to do it. He knows the mine where 
 they were found." 
 
 The celebrated actress was perhaps more out- 
 spoken than the majority of her contemporaries, 
 either male or female ; at the same time, there is 
 no doubt that her words embodied the opinion of 
 that majority with regard to the matrimonial 
 scheming of these two. The author of Colombo, 
 and Carmen was even then strongly suspected 
 of dictating the replies to the numerous affection- 
 ate epistles received by Mdlle. de Montijo, and 
 especially to those addressed to her by Louis 
 Napoleon ; for not her most ardent admirers 
 pretended that the mantle of Mme. de Sevigne 
 could have fallen on her, but it was reserved for 
 her imperial husband to find the suspicion fully 
 confirmed. The blow came in the shape of a 
 letter on the occasion of the Empress's first visit 
 to Scotland after her marriage. These visits were 
 frequently repeated, and we shall see the reason 
 why as we proceed. It was not a love-letter that 
 caused the disenchantment, it was, perhaps, the 
 reverse of a love-letter, but oh, what a falling 
 off in style was there ! 
 
 Nevertheless, it was not the great display of wit 
 in her correspondence nor the conspicuous absence 
 of it from her conversation that prevented Mdlle. 
 de Montijo's admirers from taking a decisive step. 
 
 1 2
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 I nlike the body, a woman's mind need not be 
 clothed in the most brilliant raiment in order to 
 produce a lasting impression. Mdlle. de Montijo 
 frightened her admirers by her lack of mental 
 simplicity. To see a girl assume the rSles of 
 Lydia Languish, Becky Sharp, and Lady Teazle 
 — as Miss Ada Rehan reads the latter part — in 
 the space of twenty-four hours is apt to breed 
 misgivings in the mind of a man intent on matri- 
 mony and not on marivaudage, 1 however young 
 and deeply smitten he may be. If, in addition to 
 this, the parts are invariably over-acted, the mis- 
 givings are apt to develop into something more 
 positive. The girl who poisons herself in despair 
 at an ill-requited passion is an object of admiration 
 and pity ; the girl who for similar reasons attempts 
 to poison herself with a bottle of blacking, "be- 
 cause," by her own confession, "she was in too great 
 a hurry to get something more effectual," becomes 
 an object of laughter. " But," observed a cynic who 
 heard the story, " it would have taken her less time 
 to die from strychnine or prussic acid ; the time lost 
 going to the chemist's could have been made up 
 in that way, apart from the disagreeably gastro- 
 nomic experiment of swallowing blacking and of 
 having her soul mistaken for that of a nigger. Per- 
 haps she does not mind having her soul mistaken 
 for that of a nigger. She may have been reading 
 
 1 It means "superfine flirting" after the style of the comedies 
 of Marivaux, who excelled in portraying that kind of courtship.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 117 
 
 that story about a nigger's deathbed that appeared 
 lately in The National Era at Washington." * And 
 if after that pseudo-heroic attempt at self-destruc- 
 tion " for love's sake," she had only shown herself 
 a little more considerate for the feelings of those 
 who happened to love her, the attempt would pro- 
 bably have been set down to the romantic freak of 
 a somewhat " too emancipated girl." But no such 
 consideration was ever shown by her, as the follow- 
 ing story, which is one out of a dozen, will show. 
 In those days, the railway to within a mile or 
 so of Chantilly had just been opened and caused 
 a orreat influx of female visitors from Paris, who 
 until then had abstained from going, owing to the 
 scarcity of comfortable accommodation and the 
 difficulty of returning on the same day. But there 
 was still a journey of between three and four 
 miles to the racecourse, and the supply of hackney 
 vehicles at the arrival of trains was never equal 
 to the demand. Under these conditions the pro- 
 vident anions the males took care to enrage 
 a conveyance beforehand. One of Mdlle. de 
 Montijo's most sincere admirers — in fact, the only 
 sincere one, and who would probably have set 
 prejudice with regard to her at defiance by an 
 offer of marriage — had made such provision. But 
 when the damsel arrived, escorted as usual by a 
 bodyguard of elegant viveurs, she and they took 
 
 1 The speaker was not an American but an Englishman— kind 
 Hertford.
 
 I NDERCURREN l> 01 
 
 ion of the vehicle without as much .is 
 saying " 1>\ your leave." There was just one 
 seat left when the lady espied the Count de 
 Galva for whom the blacking had been swal- 
 lowed. Overjoyed at seeing him once more, she 
 offered him the vacant seat, regardless of the 
 claims of the purveyor of the conveyance, who, 
 too well bred to show his annoyance, pretended 
 to look upon this as a joke, and in a spirit of 
 bravado kept up with the vehicle on foot. Count 
 dc Galva remonstrated with Mdlle. dc Montijo ; 
 the remonstrance did not prevent her from offering 
 the vacant seat to a second favourite on the 
 return journey. The sincere admirer did not 
 run by its side this time ; he never spoke to her 
 again. "That carriage," he said, years after, for 
 he only died in '84, " that carriage ought to have 
 been bought by Wilhelm I. as the carriage of 
 Napoleon I. was bought by Madame Tussaud ; 
 without it there might not have been an Empress 
 Eugenie ; without an Empress Eugenie there 
 would probably have been no Franco-German 
 War ; without a Franco-German War there would 
 have been no German Empire." 
 
 There is no doubt that this and other stories 
 reached Louis Napoleon's ear, and yet no hint 
 seems to have been given to Mdlle. de Montijo 
 to be more reserved in her intercourse with the 
 jcunesse dorde, although she was already then a 
 frequent guest at the Presidential entertainments ;
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 119 
 
 for it is very certain that after the episode just 
 related the flirtations went on as strongly as ever. 
 This alone would prove that Louis Napoleon had 
 not the faintest intention of making the handsome 
 Spanish girl his wife either in the near or remote 
 future. Nay, to speak frankly, the presumption is 
 that he intended to make her the reverse of his 
 wife. From the frequent allusions in his conver- 
 sations, we may take it that Louis Napoleon knew 
 his history of France by heart, and no part of it so 
 thoroughly as its ckromque galante. From personal 
 experience he knew that there were dozens of 
 Mesdames de Nesle and Mesdames Poisson about 
 and scores of Mesdemoiselles de Nesle to realise 
 their mothers' schemes. He was neither as 
 handsome nor yet as powerful as Louis XV., 
 but he may have paraphrased his mother's dictum 
 once more to himself, and concluded, " Ou'il n'y a 
 pas de laid monarque pour une aventuriere." 
 The Countess de Montijo and her daughter had 
 persistently disregarded the last of the three 
 precepts laid down by Beaumarchais for woman's 
 guidance ; 1 they had failed to command con- 
 sideration, and if Louis Napoleon looked upon 
 Mdlle. de Montijo in the light of a consort at all, 
 it was in the light of a consort de la main 
 gauche and not de la main droite. If proof of this 
 were wanted, it would be found in the fact of his 
 
 1 Here are the three precepts, " Sot's belle si lit /<< u .1 -, sage si lit 
 veux, mais sois considered ^ il lefaul."
 
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 having as good as solicited the hand of several 
 royal princesses during the period — the twelve 
 months immediately preceding his marriage — 
 when he was supposed, and not unjustly, to be 
 simply frantically in love with Mdlle. de Montijo. 
 Calebs in search of a wife was nothing to it. 
 The Dowager Duchess of Baden (Stephanie de 
 Beauharnais), the Duke of Leuchtenberg (another 
 relation on his mother's side), and Don Francis 
 d'Assisi (the husband of Isabella of Spain) were 
 successively but fruitlessly appealed to by him 
 to provide him with a spouse. Finally, just a 
 month before the public announcement of the 
 Emperor's betrothal to Mdlle. Eugenie de Montijo, 
 he applied to Prince Hohenlohe for the hand 
 of Princess Adelaide, and a week later the Queen 
 and Prince Albert were still discussing a letter 
 from Prince Hohenlohe on the subject. The new 
 Emperor's offer was kept a profound secret at 
 the time, at the urgent request of Prince Hohenlohe 
 himself, who feared that the prospect of being 
 Empress of the French might prove too dazzling 
 for his daughter, while he, her father, was in no 
 way fascinated by it. From his point of view 
 the proposed union was not desirable ; he had 
 misgivings about the settlements, and objected, 
 moreover, on the grounds of religion and morals. 
 The Queen herself, with that truly womanly 
 charity that credits the reformed rake with the 
 best of conjugal intentions, did not oppose the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 121 
 
 alliance, although, with a kind of prophetic instinct, 
 she alluded feelingly to the fate of Marie- Antoinette 
 and her successors on the throne of France. 
 Prince Albert tried hard not to let his personal 
 dislike of Louis Napoleon influence his counsel — ■ 
 a dislike, by the by, he shared with nearly all the 
 Coburgs. 1 
 
 After all this, what becomes of the stories of the 
 over-mastering passion of Louis Napoleon for 
 Mdlle. de Montijo, and of his plighted troth to 
 her ? The stories are virtually true ; yet, I re- 
 peat, up till the beginning of January, 1853, the Em- 
 peror had not the least intention of making her his 
 wife. Had his request for Princess Adelaide's 
 hand, or for that matter, for any princess's hand, 
 been accepted, he would have simply broken 
 his pledge, and substantial compensation would 
 have been forthcoming — that is, if Mdlle. de 
 Montijo, faute de mieux, had not accepted the 
 position of a La Valliere, qualifying meanwhile 
 for that of a Pompadour ; for Louis Napoleon 
 was like Louis XV. rather than like Philippe 
 
 1 Want of space prevents my giving all the particulars of this 
 affair, which for many, many years afterwards were only known to 
 a half-dozen persons at the outside, namely, the Queen, Prince 
 Albert, Napoleon III., Prince Hohenlohe, Lord Palmerston, and 
 Walewski, who had sounded Palmerston on the subject. It was 
 Palmerston who suggested the Emperor's letter to Prince Hohen- 
 lohe. Walewski, who was a friend of Dr. Ve"ron, at whose house he 
 once lost 96,000 francs at a single game of lansquenet, told his 
 host, and the latter told my uncle. I feel almost convinced that 
 the whole truth is not even known now, except to the Queen. As
 
 I NDERCURRENTS 0] 
 
 d'Orldans, and would not have said, "Je ne donne 
 pas d'audience sur l'oreiller." 
 
 As ;i was, the announcement caused a panic, 
 though not an unforeseen one, for the Emperor's 
 entourage had been, it not consulted, at least 
 apprised of his intention. That entourage was, as 
 we shall see in the next chanter, heterogeneous to 
 a degree ; yet, dissimilar as were all these men in 
 taste, birth, breeding, and disposition, all but 
 one disapproved of " this in extremis matrimonial 
 choice " — the expression is not mine. To all of 
 which objections the Emperor, faisant bonuc mine 
 a mauvais jeu, and with commendable chivalry to 
 his betrothed, replied : " Ouand on a sous la 
 main ce que Ton aime, ce n'est pas la peine 
 d'aller chercher ce que Ion n'aime pas." " The 
 Emperor is right," said Dupin — the only one who 
 approved, though reservedly, the choice — "the 
 Emperor acts more sensibly in marrying the 
 woman he likes than in eating humble pie to 
 
 for my statement about the dislike of the Coburgs of Napo- 
 leon III., it is not founded on hearsay only. Leopold I. of 
 Belgium disliked him heartily, and for very good reasons. Duke 
 Ernest, Prince Albert's brother, hinted very plainly in his 
 Memoirs that Louis Napoleon was a coward, which was not a 
 fact. Duke Ernest was a guest at the Tuileries on the 14th 
 January, 1858, and was present at the Opera when the Emperor 
 entered his box after Orsini's attempt. The Emperor did certainly 
 not "indulge in incoherent gesticulation from sheer fright" ; on the 
 contrary, he was outwardly very calm, but even if he had indulged 
 in such gesticulation, it would have been more courteous on the 
 part of his guest not to have recorded the fact.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 123 
 
 some German princelet for his daughter with 
 feet probably as large as mine. At any rate, 
 when the Emperor kisses his wife, it will be 
 from choice and not from compulsion." 
 
 The Faubourg St. Germain — i.e. the old noblesse 
 — made common cause with the Orleanists' salons 
 in their scathing comments. They conveniently 
 overlooked the fact that they were the descend- 
 ants of the most corrupt society the world had 
 seen since the Roman Empire, so corrupt that 
 before the Revolution the fact of having a 
 Frenchwoman among his ancestors disqualified a 
 man for investiture with the knighthood of one 
 of the Teutonic orders. There was no attempt at 
 investigation, the fact itself was deemed a con- 
 elusive proof that plebeian blood had been intro- 
 duced. Prince Puckler-Muskau, who had a French 
 mother was debarred from entering the Knights- 
 Templars on that account. The Faubourg St. 
 Honore — the noblesse of the First Empire — also 
 forgot their own origin. The bourgeoisie of the 
 Chaussee d'Antin was more disgusted still, and 
 in its comments hit the Faubourg St. Honore 
 smartly on the head, though perhaps unwittingly. 
 They in reality considered it a slight that the 
 Emperor had not chosen one of their daughters. 
 " Eugenie de Montijo is after all the grand- 
 daughter of a trader like ourselves. One <>l 
 our girls would have done as well. The First
 
 I.-; UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 Empire was built up with the blood of stable 
 
 lads, coopers' 'prentices, and what not. The 
 
 ►nd Empire might have done worse than 
 
 take a little of the blood a cut above that of the 
 
 stable lads, &c." The Faubourg St. Antoine 
 would have applauded such a step ; though they 
 would, in spite oi their democratic prejudices, 
 have preferred a (.laughter of the old noblesse. 
 In default of a foreign princess, they would have 
 preferred a Frenchwoman of no matter what 
 class, and they jeered at that part of the 
 Emperor's manifesto which described Mdlle. de 
 Montijo " as being French at heart." The 
 bourgeois Voltairien jeered at another allusion in 
 that proclamation — viz., " the virtues of Jose- 
 phine." " It is a strange present to put into a 
 girl's trousseau" he said, but perhaps they can 
 only afford one shift, and they have given her a 
 Nessus-shirt, which will not come off. 
 
 When it came to selecting the Empress's future 
 household, the difficulties were still greater ; the 
 Faubourg St. Germain as well as the Faubourg 
 St. Honore declined the honour of a position 
 at Court for their womankind. The Emperor 
 quoted Ovid. "Ardua molimur ; sed nulla nisi 
 ardua virtus," and paraphrased Juvenal in reference 
 to a lady who declined in a somewhat offensive 
 way. Her own reputation was not altogether 
 spotless. " Ardeat ipsa licet, tormentis gaudet
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 125 
 
 amantis " is the correct quotation. Napoleon 
 made it " Ardeat ipsa licet, ibidines aliarum 
 juvant." 
 
 Not that the Emperor was bent upon the 
 rigidly virtuous woman, but he was perforce 
 obliged to make advances to her. With what 
 result will be apparent in the next chapter.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 " During the week that passed between the 
 public announcement of the Emperor's forth- 
 coming marriage with Mdlle. de Montijo and the 
 celebration of the marriage itself, civilised Europe 
 simply went mad with excitement, and the whole 
 of this excitement was virtually transmitted to 
 Paris like a telegraphic message." This sentence 
 was written less than six weeks after the event, and 
 on the writer's return from a dinner party at the 
 Tuileries. It forms part of one of the notes 
 given to me by M. de Maupas, shortly after I 
 had translated his Story of the Coup oT Etat, and 
 I have every reason to believe that their author 
 was an English nobleman — I repeat, an English 
 nobleman, and not a commoner, so it could not 
 have been Mr. (afterwards Sir) Richard Wallace. 
 If I were even more certain of his identity than I 
 am, I should feel compelled to withhold his name ; 
 this much I may however point out to my past as 
 well as future critics that, in spite of all their
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF THE SECOND EMPIRE 127 
 
 efforts, and they were assuredly many, they have 
 never been able to convict me of a false state- 
 ment with regard to the main facts contained in 
 either of my previous books, and I doubt if they 
 will be more successful in the present instance. 
 I will now return to the note in question which 
 proceeds as follows. 
 
 " The excitement has not abated ; if anything, 
 it appears to be on the increase, and especially is 
 this the case with the immediate entourage of the 
 Imperial couple. The whole of to-night's enter- 
 tainment looked to me unreal, something like a 
 banqueting scene of an opera, and I should not 
 have been surprised to find the capon under my 
 knife to consist of cardboard and my 'goblet of 
 sparkling wine ' 'full of emptiness,' with a rim of 
 cotton-wool to represent the foam of the cham- 
 pagne 'that was not there.' I fancy, moreover, 
 that this feeling of unreality, which obtruded itself 
 on me at intervals, exists permanently among the 
 majority of the new Imperial household, and is 
 not altogether absent from the minds of the 
 Emperor and Empress themselves, although they 
 play their roles with consummate skill and ease, 
 especially the Empress ; but the marvellous self- 
 control of both is calculated to deceive every one 
 except perhaps those who, like myself, are con- 
 stantly on the watch. Different is it with the 
 majority of their chamberlains, courtiers, servants, 
 though not with the dames d honueur. In spite of
 
 I NDER( URREN rS 01 
 
 the former's phenomenal aplomb and their Irre- 
 proachable U ;::n\ they 'give themselves away ' more 
 frequently than the latter, for the slightest noise 
 scrms to startle them, and they are constantly 
 glancing at the doors and behind them, as if expect- 
 ing some sudden catastrophe which will fling them 
 back into the humdrum existence from which they 
 just emerged, or worse. ' Mon ami, y said Vely 
 Pasha, to whom I communicated this impression ; 
 'Mou ami, you arc; right, and I may compliment you 
 on your powers of imagination which enable you to 
 enter into their feelings. To me, or to a Russian 1 
 of my age, that kind of look presents nothing 
 unusual ; it is the kind of haunted look which you 
 may notice on the face of nearly every Turkish or 
 Russian Court official after a more or less suc- 
 cessful palace-revolution, when he expects at any 
 moment the doors of the apartment to be flung 
 open and a company of soldiers to lay hands on 
 him and his fellow guests. In a few months 
 from now this look will gradually disappear, 
 especially if the more cordial recognition of 
 le fait accompli or of les jaits accomp/is, 
 both of the Empire and the marriage, be 
 forthcoming from the Courts of Europe. The 
 Emperor is moving heaven and earth to obtain 
 this recognition. Will he succeed ? I fancy 
 
 1 Yely Pasha was the then Turkish ambassador to France. He 
 was, I believe, of French extraction, and exceedingly well-in- 
 formed.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 129 
 
 he will. His most formidable opponent at 
 present is King Leopold, who is spreading all 
 kinds of reports about him, some true and others 
 not true, with regard to his warlike intentions. 
 Of course, Leopold is working for his own parish ; 
 in other words, he is afraid concerning his own 
 throne, and would, moreover, do a good turn to 
 his nephew, the Comte de Paris. It is Leopold 
 who has been trying for the last twelvemonth to 
 persuade Queen Victoria that the restoration of 
 the French Empire means a perpetual danger to 
 England. It was Leopold who put a spoke into 
 the Emperor's wheel when the latter asked for 
 Princess Adelaide's hand ; and Palmerston, in spite 
 of his own cleverness and his dislike of the late 
 Louis Philippe and his family, was unable to 
 checkmate Leopold in that respect. What he did 
 prevent, and will continue to prevent, is the 
 attempt to poison the Queen's mind politically 
 against Louis Napoleon. He found an unex- 
 pected ally in Wellington, who, shortly before his 
 death, went to the Queen or sent her word to the 
 effect that though Louis Napoleon might be 
 unscrupulous he would not go to war with 
 England. I know that you do not share either 
 Palmerston's or Wellington's opinion, but you 
 will find that both were right. Whatsoever 
 happens, the Emperor will not go to war 
 with England, and that for various reasons; 
 although I have not the least doubt that
 
 , ; UNDERCURREN is OF 
 
 a war with England would be popular at any 
 time in France. To begin with, a war with 
 England would mean a naval war, and Louis 
 Napoleon fosters no illusions on the subject of 
 the French navy, 1 even if he could find a 
 plausible pretext for such a war. The only 
 question which the Emperor can take up at 
 present in a hostile spirit is that of the Holy 
 Places, and in that direction the interests of 
 England and E ranee appear for the moment 
 identical. I say appear identical, inasmuch as 
 both England and Erance would prevent Russia 
 laying hands on Constantinople on the pre- 
 text of protecting the Christians in the East. 
 In reality, those among you who suspect the 
 Emperor of a desire for war are not altogether 
 wrong, but they mistake his main motive which 
 is not the aggrandisement of France at the 
 expense of this or that power. What he desires 
 most is a showy, but for all that Platonic 
 alliance, an alliance that will cast a glamour 
 on his newly revived dynasty, or, to be correct, 
 on himself and the Consort whom he has 
 chosen in direct defiance of all tradition. Such 
 an alliance, unfortunately, cannot be contracted 
 
 1 The Emperor could have fostered no illusions on the subject, 
 seeing that a twelvemonth after this conversation — viz., at the 
 outbreak of the Crimean War— Marshal St.-Arnaud had to be 
 conveyed to the scene of operations on a tug, while the Spahis, his 
 particular escort, had to be satisfied with La Belle Poule, the 
 vessel that had brought Napoleon's remains from St. Helena more 
 than twenty years before.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 131 
 
 a pi'opos de rien, there must be a real or 
 supposed adversary against whom to com- 
 bine, and accident has befriended him in 
 making Nicholas not only the most convenient 
 enemy, but the sole enemy against whom an 
 advantageous alliance, from the Emperor's own 
 point of view, may be contracted. Just work 
 out the problem for yourself, 1 always bearing 
 in mind that the alliance itself is the thing, and 
 that it must afford not only the greatest number 
 of chances of success from a military standpoint in 
 case of need, but at the same time the greatest 
 
 1 The author of the note did not work out the problem, at any 
 rate not on paper ; but it only requires a moment's thought to 
 admit the justice of Vely Pasha's remarks. There were only two 
 European powers to attack at that moment, Austria and Russia. 
 To beard the former on the pretext of freeing Italy from her yoke, 
 as was done in 1859, would have been too dangerous for the home 
 peace of France, for the clergy never mistook the final aim of a 
 free Italy — namely, the occupation of Rome, and the clergy had 
 especially to be reckoned with at the beginning of Napoleon III.'s 
 reign. Besides, a war with Austria would have only given the 
 Court of the Tuileries the advantage of an alliance with the Court 
 of Turin, and Adelaide, Queen of Piedmont, who was an Austrian 
 archduchess, was not sufficiently important to counteract the pre- 
 judices of Europe with regard to Mile, de Montijo and her 
 surroundings, even if she had consented to do so, which is ex- 
 tremely doubtful. To court the alliance of Prussia or Austria in 
 a war against Russia would have been equally futile. Prussia was 
 in those days under the tutelage of Nicholas, whose wife was the 
 sister of the King of Prussia himself and of the heir-presumptive. 
 Queen Elizabeth of Prussia (the wife of Frederick William IV.) 
 would not have paid a visit to the Tuileries ; Princess Augusta — 
 afterwards Empress Augusta — would not have been allowed to ■■••. 
 if she had wished. Francis Joseph was a bachelor, and, moreover, 
 under too recent obligations to Russia for her assistance in the 
 suppression of the Hungarian insurrection. 
 
 K 2
 
 . ;,.- I NDERCURREN is Of 
 
 amount of social prestige obtainable. By which I 
 mean that it must provide the most unexceptionable 
 sponsor for himself and the Empress in the face 
 of Europe. It you do work this out for yourself, 
 you cannot fail to come to the conclusion that 
 Queen Victoria is not only the most desirable 
 ally, but, in fact, the only available one. A show 
 of active goodwill on Queen Victoria's part will 
 put an end at once to the equivocal situation of 
 the Imperial couple, it will reverse at once the 
 unspoken sentence of ostracism delivered mentally 
 against the Empress by the female members of 
 the reigning houses of Europe ; it will, in fact, be 
 tantamount to a presentation en regie et en masse 
 at one of the ' drawing-rooms ' at Buckingham 
 Palace of all the adventurers and adventuresses 
 among whom we happen to be seated at this 
 moment." 
 
 " I looked closely at Vely Pasha," says the 
 author of the note, " in order to discern how much 
 of all this was thrown out as a bait, and how 
 much of it was founded upon knowledge. Two 
 months ago (December, 1852) I had been told by 
 a friend from London that they considered Louis 
 Napoleon's somewhat too conspicuous concern 
 about the Holy Places and the Latin Christians 
 in the East as fraught with danger to the peace 
 of Europe, and at any rate, as premature. But no 
 motive like that advanced by Vely Pasha had 
 been assigned to it, for the simple reason that a
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 133 
 
 marriage with Mile, de Montijo was only decided 
 on about the middle of January. Before that 
 time the new Emperor's contemplated action in 
 the matter was attributed to his wish to court 
 favour with the clerical party. The new Empress 
 however is also suspected of decided ultramontane 
 tendencies, and both may be wishing to kill two 
 birds with one stone. Be this as it may, there is 
 no doubt about Vely Pasha's absolutely correct 
 view of the actual situation. Directed against no 
 matter whom, the first war of the Second Empire 
 will be waged for the sake of securing to the 
 Empress a different footing from that which she 
 occupies at present. 
 
 " Candidly speaking, the present footing is the 
 reverse of agreeable. The grandes dames of 
 the Faubourg St. Germain, to whom the 
 highest positions in the Empress' household 
 were offered, laughed the idea to scorn, as 
 their grandmothers and mothers had done to a 
 certain extent when Napoleon I. made similar 
 overtures to them at his marriage with Marie 
 Louise. Napoleon I. foamed at the mouth, and 
 swore at all those ' belles dames qui font les 
 rencheries et ne veulent pas paraitre a. ma cour ! ' 
 and threatened to make them obey. 
 
 " He succeeded in a little while, because after 
 all, the daughter of the Hapsburgs was as good 
 as they, and there could be no comment on her 
 past. His nephew, who has his temper under
 
 ..;» UND1 RCURREN r> 01 
 
 better control, and is less brutal and more witty, 
 simply smiles and makes scathing remarks in the 
 shape of epigrams. ' We ought not to have 
 offered Mme. la Duchesse de . . . the post of 
 dame d'honneur,' the Emperor said about seven 
 weeks a^o. ' She is too bus)- at night to undergo 
 any kind of fatigue in the day.' Another of the 
 refractory dames he called ' une Penelope a 
 rebours ' anglicd, a Penelope who inverts the 
 task of Orestes' wife, ' vu qu'elle defait pendant 
 le jour ce qu'elle a accompli pendant la nuit.' 
 But epigrams, however brilliant, are not calculated 
 to bring about the wished-for rapprochement be- 
 tween the women of the Tuileries and those of 
 the Faubourg St. Germain. Some of the male 
 members of the old nobility are showing a 
 tendency to rally round the new regime. It will 
 not do, perhaps, to scrutinize their motives too 
 closely. Some are influenced by pecuniary con- 
 siderations, others by personal ambition. 1 
 
 "But whatever these motives may be, they do not 
 appear to be strong enough to affect the minds of 
 
 1 Shortly after the re-establishment of the Senate (January, 1852) 
 its members passed a bill conferring upon the Emperor the right 
 of granting senators an annual gratification varying from 15,000 to 
 30,000 francs. The Emperor had the nomination of 150 senators, 
 Dupin was one of the first to be appointed. But as the author of 
 the above note remarks, all the new converts were not influenced 
 by money considerations. The Due de Guiche, the playfellow of 
 the Comte de Chambord and to whom the Comte's aunt had left 
 ^40,000 per annum, could not have been thus influenced. This 
 was the future Due de Gramont, who rushed France into the war 
 of 1870.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 135 
 
 the womankind of the new converts. They, the 
 womankind, continue to stand aloof; their fathers, 
 husbands, and brothers attend the Imperial recep- 
 tions and entertainments by themselves. This 
 makes it awkward for the six or seven true gentle- 
 women by whom the Empress is surrounded, for, 
 in spite of Vely Pasha's wholesale condemnation, 
 all the women are not adventuresses, but the men, 
 with the exception of the contingent from the 
 Faubourg St. Germain, and a very few others 
 have all a more or less shady past, and that not- 
 withstanding their high-sounding titles, which, in 
 the majority of cases are real enough. ' I do not 
 know a single individual here who in any other 
 country would pass muster as a commonly honest 
 man.' Thus wrote Finch, the English ambassador 
 to the court of Eljzabeth of Russia, and his 
 sentence will almost hold good with regard to the 
 civil members of the Emperor's household, for, as 
 I have said, with the exception of the new comers 
 from the Faubourg St. Germain and a few others, 
 such as, for instance, Walewski, Mocquarcl, and 
 Ferdinand Barrot, they have all been involved 
 in discreditable money transactions. The vieille 
 noblesse, though clean in that respect until now, 
 will not remain clean long, for albeit that the 
 Empire is very young, there is the smell of 
 booty in the air, and, unless I am utterly mis 
 taken, the smell will even corrupt what has been 
 hitherto the most invulnerable section of the
 
 ij(. I NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 French nation, the French army, by which, <>i 
 course. 1 mean the higher grades, 
 
 •• As it is, these civilians are, as yet, the 
 most Interesting to the dispassionate observer, 
 especially those; who for reasons which it is im- 
 possible to guess and rarely possible to ascertain, 
 have been pitchforked into high places. The 
 number of civilian craftsmen who 'staged' the 
 coup d'etat is pretty well known ; they are 
 Persigny and Maupas ; yet, to see these new- 
 fangled dignitaries strut and pose, to hear them 
 talk, one would really think that each of them had 
 borne the whole brunt of the affair. There is a 
 minister 1 who would fain have us believe that he 
 furnished thousands upon thousands to defray the 
 expenses of the coitp ci'dtat. As it happens, I 
 know for a fact that the coup d'itat was carried 
 out with very little money, one might say without 
 any money, for the President had not sufficient to 
 settle the notes that were sent in afterwards for 
 the refreshment of the troops, though the whole 
 amount did not exceed 15,000 francs. I have 
 heard this boast on the part of this minister for the 
 last three months, and the other day while at 
 luncheon with Yeron, I happened to mention it. 
 Sophie, his housekeeper, 2 was in the room, and as 
 she is an old and trusty servant, the like of whom 
 
 1 At the especial request of many sincere friends and advisers I 
 have suppressed nearly all the names from this note. 
 
 2 She was a famous character. I have given a short account of 
 her in An Englishman in Paris, Vol. I., Chap. iii.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 137 
 
 one rarely sees off the stage, she often gives her 
 opinion on men and things without being asked. 
 ' He lend the Emperor money ! ' she interrupted, 
 ' vraiment la plaisanterie est trop bonne. Voyons 
 monsieur ' this turning to her master : ' you know 
 well enough that he would not lend a traitrc sou (a 
 red cent) to any one to save him from starvation. 
 Does not monsieur remember his coming in one 
 morning after he had been to see the President, 
 and his telling monsieur how nicely he had been 
 received ? Thereupon he told monsieur,' this 
 particularly to me, ' that the President had 
 offered to make him a minister. <J Why didn't you 
 accept ? " asked monsieur. " I would have done 
 so," he answered, " but I was afraid of his asking 
 me to lend him some [money." 'It's quite true,' 
 Veron burst outMaughing. ' I had forgotten all 
 about it.' 
 
 " There is also an equally brand-new cham- 
 berlain, who goes about bellowing that as long as 
 he remains at the Tuileries not a hair of the 
 Emperor's head will be hurt, that, in fact, he 
 will be the French Roustan to Napoleon III., 
 while it is well known that a few months 
 before the coup d\Hat he said repeatedly to 
 every one who would listen to him that ' Louis 
 Napoleon ought to be got rid of,' and that ' the 
 man who would put a bullet through his head 
 would deserve well of his country.' ' 
 
 I have given this note in extenso because I feel
 
 i;,s UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 convinced, from collateral evidence, both from 
 English .md French sources that it contains the 
 explanation <>l France's share in the Crimean 
 
 War. My reasons for not producing that evi- 
 dence are simply want of space. By this time 
 Napoleon III. had become fully alive to the 
 necessity of counteracting the unfavourable im- 
 pression produced throughout Europe by the 
 faits et gestes of his courtiers, which doings 
 formed the main topic of the despatches sent by 
 the various ambassadors to their governments. 
 To check, still less to put an end to, these doings 
 was at that moment absolutely impossible, for the 
 simple reason that such an attempt would have 
 entailed the banishment of the whole of his family 
 from the Tuileries and perhaps from France ; for 
 those whose foremost aim and duty it should 
 have been to preserve the by no means unsullied 
 records of the Bonapartes from additional stains, 
 seemed bent on besmirching these records still 
 further, and to this charge there is scarcely an 
 exception. The ex-King of Westphalia and his 
 son, not content with their political burrowing 
 and their undermining of the influence of their 
 nephew and cousin as a monarch and the head of 
 their house, must needs discredit him and his 
 court by flaunting their vices in the face of France 
 and consequently of Europe. One does not 
 expect men to be saints, but when a septuagenarian 
 or nearly such, like the ex-King of Westphalia,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 139 
 
 never stirs without his mistress by his side the 
 word "Satyr" is apt to crop up to people's lips. 
 "The apple does not drop far away from the 
 tree ; " says a German proverb, and the son was 
 worse than the father ; so bad, in fact, that 
 Palmerston, who was throughout Louis Napoleon's 
 friend, stopped him at once when he hinted at a 
 marriage between his cousin and Princess Mary 
 of Cambridge (the^present Duchess of Teck). I 
 had the story some years ago from the lips of Ernest 
 Renan, whose admiration of Prince Napoleon's 
 mental qualities seems, curiously enough, to have 
 blinded him to the man's utterly moral worthless- 
 ness. Renan's informant was the Prince himself 
 who, it should be said, was as cynically frank about 
 the rebuffs he received in life as about his successes. 
 Though at the time of the Emperor's suggestion 
 the Anglo-French commercial treaty was scarcely 
 thought of, "free trade" was in the air, especially 
 shortly after the Exhibition of '55, at which time 
 the conversation between the Emperor and the 
 English statesman must have taken place. " A 
 marriage between your Majesty's cousin and 
 Princess Mary, sire," Palmerston replied in 
 answer to the suggestion ; " I am afraid that's out 
 of the question. The Prince is somewhat too 
 much of a free-trader, and though England may 
 be pleased to see most duties abolished, I doubt 
 if she will want to do away with conjugal duties." 
 The Emperor smiled and dropped the subject.
 
 l NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 And be it remembered that Palmerston was 
 a man of the world in the widest sense ol the 
 weird, and neither a hypocrite nor strait-laced. 
 But <\< n Victor Emmanuel, who was of much 
 coarser fibre and not scrupulous where the gratifi- 
 cation of his passions was concerned, hesitated 
 to give Princess Clotilde in marriage to Plon- 
 Plon. It wanted all the eloquence of Cavour ] 
 and all the great issues at stake to reconcile 
 him to the idea ; that is, if he was really ever 
 reconciled to it, which invincible reluctance I 
 shall be able to prove by and by. 
 
 And though there is no doubt that Plon- 
 Plon was the worst offender, the whole of the 
 Emperor's family, with the exception of Anna 
 Murat, afterwards Duchesse de Mouchy, vied 
 with each other to bring the dynasty into 
 contempt. Princesse Mathilde's unfortunate 
 marriage justified to a certain extent, perhaps, 
 her liaison with Niewerkerke ; it did not justify 
 its brazen-faced obtrusion on the public. The 
 Caninos, Cameratas, Pepolis, Murats, and 
 Morny all followed suit, and followed suit with 
 a vengeance. Their amorous intrigues were, after 
 all, the least of their offences. They all soiled 
 their hands with money transactions ; they lent 
 
 1 To students of history, this statement need not be insisted 
 on. The ordinary reader, curious in such matters, I may refer to 
 Cavour's correspondence, and particularly to the despatch sent by 
 him to Victor Emmanuel from Baden on the 28th July, 1858, 
 after his (Cavour's) interview with the Emperor at Plombieres.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 141 
 
 their names to bogus companies, and both in the 
 love-affairs and money transactions, the Emperor, 
 when exposure became imminent, had to bear 
 the brunt of their misdoings to avoid public 
 scandal. What the writer of the note quoted 
 in the beginning of this chapter predicted came 
 to pass, and in a very short time ; the corruption 
 even spread to what had been until then the 
 most invulnerable section of the French nation— 
 viz., the higher grades of the army. Shortly 
 after the establishment of the Empire, Saint- 
 Arnaud became involved in Stock- Exchange 
 speculations which, rightly or wrongly, led to 
 the accusation on the part of Colonel Comeneuse 
 that he (Saint-Arnaud) had abstracted ,£4,000 
 from the War-chest. They fought a duel in 
 a room in the Tuileries itself, and Colonel 
 Comeneuse was killed. In this instance the 
 Emperor's proposed mediation was of no avail. 
 
 Every now and then, though, there was a 
 comic side to the Emperor's part of mediator, 
 financial stopgap and universal peacemaker ; 
 especially when complications of a somewhat 
 flighty nature had to be adjusted, in which case 
 the sovereign was made the scapegoat for the 
 doings of both parties, sometimes with his will, 
 more often against it. One evening, just before 
 dinner, an ordnance officer of the Emperor, a 
 dashing, good-looking captain of cavalry, entered 
 the Apollo drawing-room with a semi-mysterious
 
 I4 a UNDERCT RREN is OF 
 
 look of mischief Oil his face. A few minutes 
 
 afterwards he retired to a recess near the window, 
 
 mpanied by seme of his lellow-officers, all 
 young, to whom he showed, somewhat ostenta- 
 tiously, an envelope containing a small engraving 
 
 or woodcut, the sight of which aroused shouts 
 <,A~ laughter, more or less suppressed. That, of 
 course, was sufficient to excite the curiosity 
 oi the female guests, some of whom ap- 
 proached on tiptoe and begged to be allowed 
 to look. The request having been granted, 
 they retreated more or less confused, although 
 in reality there was nothing absolutely shocking 
 about the picture. There was, however, enough 
 to whet the appetite of those who had not 
 been gratified with a glimpse and who were 
 meditating a journey to the window-recess when 
 the chamberlain on duty announced that dinner 
 was on the table. Among these was the young 
 and sprightly wife of an old and rather stern 
 general who was, moreover, exceedingly jealous. 
 It so happened that the possessor of the picture 
 had to take her in to dinner, which gave her 
 an opportunity of preferring her request more 
 urgently. The officer deftly slipped the envelope 
 into her hand and she, more deftly still, slipped 
 it into her dress without being seen by any one. 
 Next morning, almost before the Emperor was 
 out of bed, the ordnance-officer asked to be 
 admitted. The sprightly young matron, unable
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 143 
 
 to restrain her impatience had cast a furtive 
 g-lance at the picture, and the jealous husband 
 had caught her in the act. She was obliged 
 to give the name of the donor and she gave 
 the name of the Emperor — informing the young 
 officer during the evening of what she had done, 
 and leaving to him the task of " setting matters 
 straight," which he had not much difficulty in 
 doing, for the Emperor was amiability personified 
 and delighted in a Boccacian joke. The general 
 himself never applied to the Emperor for con- 
 firmation of his wife's story. He probably felt 
 flattered at the sovereign's having singled her 
 out in this way ; although he himself as well 
 as every one else must have known by that time 
 that the Emperor was not prone to commit what 
 we may euphemistically term farces platoniques. 
 The sans-gene of the culprit in appealing to the 
 Emperor to get him out of his scrape ; and the 
 laissez-faire of the victim in not appealing to the 
 Emperor for an explanation supply a sufficiently 
 conclusive instance of the tone and sentiments 
 then already prevailing at the Tuileries with 
 regard to womanly reserve and conjugal fidelity. 
 
 As time goes on and the dynasty becomes 
 apparently more consolidated at home and 
 abroad, this original attitude of sans-gene with 
 regard to the Emperor will assume a form 
 which even the least observant cannot fail to 
 notice, for there lies one of the germs of the
 
 144 UNDER! TkKI.N is OF 
 
 Franco-German War. As yet, however, we 
 are at the period Immediately before and after 
 the outbreak o\ the Crimean War, when 
 Napoleon III. is still the sole dispenser of the 
 I things, when the adventurers around him 
 not sufficiently daring, but above all not 
 sufficiently accredited in the eyes of France 
 which eventually they are to bleed in every 
 vein, to help themselves. The " Haussmann- 
 izing " of Paris, that theoretically honest, 
 beneficent and gigantic idea is, as yet, only in its 
 infancy, and has not been transformed into a 
 system of shameless robbery and into a precedent 
 for systems equally shameless. In one word, 
 the sovereign is as yet the sovereign, consider- 
 ablv hampered by his past, it is true, and often 
 yielding where he ought to resist, but not the 
 puppet of the most gangrened society that ever 
 existed on the face of the civilized earth, as 
 will be seen later on. 
 
 Meanwhile the struggle in the Crimea was 
 running its course ; the battles of the Alma, 
 Inkermann and Balaclava had been fought, but 
 with the exception of a State visit from the Queen 
 to the French ambassador in London in 1854, the 
 Anglo-French alliance had not been productive of 
 the results which according to Vely Pasha were 
 the chief motive of this alliance on the part of 
 Xapoleon III. I quote once more from one of 
 the notes given to me by M. de Maupas, but
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 145 
 
 unlike the first, this one appears not to have been 
 written at one sitting. 
 
 " The French are almost apathetic with regard 
 to the news from the seat of war. There was no 
 enthusiasm at the tidings of the victorious en- 
 gagements, and for once in a way the magic of the 
 word gloire seems to have failed in its effect, not 
 only on the masses but also on the better classes ; 
 and this, notwithstanding the efforts of the news- 
 papers to work the oracle. This lukewarmness on 
 the part of the nation is not due to the fact 
 of ' the glory being divided ; ' as some of my 
 English friends who were here a few days ago, 
 suggest. It is due to the impression generally 
 prevailing that France is taking the chestnuts out 
 of the fire for England to munch ; in other words, 
 that France is being made the catspaw of England. 
 And the impression is shared by the court itself, 
 for of course, no one outside the court circles and 
 very few within have a definite idea of the real 
 reason that prompted the Emperor to contract this 
 alliance — for I begin to think that Vely Pasha was 
 absolutely correct in his surmises. If so, the 
 Emperor and Empress must be greatly disap- 
 pointed, for as yet no invitation from Windsor has 
 reached the Tuileries. That both are clever enough 
 to hide their disappointment there is not the 
 shadow of a doubt ; at the same time, the Empress, 
 who is a Spaniard and consequently impulsive, 
 may have dropped a few words expressing her 
 
 L
 
 UNDERCURREN is OF 
 
 dissatisfaction with things as they appear, while 
 still hiding her real thoughts, and these words 
 have no doubt been magnified and spread about. 
 The Empress is slowly gathering round her a 
 COterie as yet it is not a party — whose avowed 
 mission, or rather pretension it is to take a share 
 in politics. Their targets at present are Jerome 
 and his son, which puts the Emperor in an awkward 
 position, for, not to mince matters, I believe the 
 Emperor is afraid of Jerome's son and I am not 
 the only one who fosters this belief. Lord Cowley 
 said as much the other day. 
 
 •• Success at last! The Emperor and Empress 
 are going to England about the middle of next 
 month. 1 The visit, from what I hear from those who 
 do know, will be the upshot of a cleverly enacted 
 comedy within a comedy. How far it will deceive 
 those who, in spite of themselves perhaps, have 
 been drawn into the cast, I am unable to say, but 
 two of the principal actors, the Emperor and the 
 Empress, have every reason to be satisfied. It 
 appears that some months ago the Emperor 
 expressed his intention to Lord Clarendon to take 
 command of the army in the Crimea. Clarendon 
 quietly told the Emperor to abandon the idea, and 
 the matter was not referred to again until within 
 the last fortnight or three weeks, when the 
 
 1 This part of the note must, therefore, have been written in 
 March, 1855. The remaining part seems also divided by a short 
 interval.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 147 
 
 Empress, at one of the receptions, took Lord 
 Cowley aside, and with tears in her eyes, 
 communicated to him that the Emperor had 
 reverted to his original intention and was 
 determined this time to carry it through. ' I 
 cannot and dare not dissuade the Emperor; if I 
 did, there might be an outcry against me ;' the 
 Empress said, or words to that effect. The 
 Empress also as good as said that in this instance 
 her usual influence over the Emperor would be of 
 no avail, that in fact she did not have much faith 
 in any one's influence except perhaps that of the 
 English court. Two or three days afterwards 
 Cowley had a private letter from England on the 
 same subject and stating that both Walewski and 
 Countess Walewski had expressed a similar 
 opinion. Cowley gives one pretty clearly to 
 understand that he did not for one single moment 
 believe in the Emperor's genuine intention to go 
 to the Crimea, or in the Empress' belief in that 
 intention, at the same time he is quite willing to 
 admit that the Emperor would have gone if the 
 invitation to Windsor had not been given. As 
 that, still according to Cowley's admission, was a 
 contingency to be avoided at all costs, he also set 
 to work to procure the invitation, but whosoever 
 else is, Cowley is not the dupe of the comedy." 
 
 " The visit to England, it appears, has gone 
 off most admirably. If it was a comedy, the 
 London crowd, the City Corporation, the public 
 
 i. 2
 
 I MM RCURREN rs OF 
 
 bodies have seconded the Queen and Prince 
 Albert in a marvellous manner in the spectacular 
 part of it. For though Londoners are not more 
 intelligent than the dwellers in other capitals of 
 Europe, a good many among the former must 
 have had an idea, however vague, that all the 
 traditions of the- English Court and the private 
 life of the sovereign herself were opposed to the 
 reception en famille of this very brand-new- 
 Imperial couple. But the Queen having said A, 
 her good-tempered Londoners were determined to 
 proceed to the last letter of the alphabet, and before 
 they were half through with it, made the comedy 
 a reality. Of course, the unquestionable beauty 
 of the Empress has had something to do with 
 this spontaneity, but if I read the private accounts 
 which have reached me aright, the Emperor him- 
 self did more than any one else to provoke this 
 enthusiasm by the masterly interpretation of his 
 part. He adopted the tactics he had found so 
 effectual at Strasburg and Ham and Boulogne 
 during his presidential journeys, and without 
 waiting for people to remind him of his adven- 
 turous past, he reminded people of it. What 
 was cleverer still, he did it des son entrde en scene, 
 as the French would say. As the Royal and 
 Imperial procession wound its way up St. James* 
 Street, less than an hour after his arrival, he 
 stood up in his carriage and showed the Em- 
 press the lodgings in King Street he had occupied
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 149 
 
 when his future seemed dark and dreary enough. 1 
 That, unless I am mistaken in my own countrymen, 
 'did the trick.' Next day, the story went the 
 round of the papers, supplemented by other 
 anecdotes from those who had known Prince 
 Louis when he was a familiar figure at the clubs 
 and at Lady Blessington's ; the writers vying with 
 each other in laying stress on the indomitable 
 strength of will in adversity of the new Emperor 
 and conveniently forgetting how they had laughed 
 that strength of will to scorn at the time of its 
 display. In short, twenty-four hours after the 
 raising of the curtain upon that particular act of 
 the comedy, the author of the play as well as all 
 the actors in it, seeing that every one was satisfied, 
 might have asked one another with Don Basile in 
 Le Barbier de Seville — ' Qui trompe-t-on ici ? tout 
 le monde est clans le secret.' As it happened, 
 every one was not let into the secret, not even 
 among those who ought to have made it their 
 
 1 History always repeats itself. The first time Napoleon I. and 
 Marie-Louise crossed the Pont-Neuf together, the Emperor stood 
 up in his carriage and pointed out to his bride a house on the Quai 
 Conti. Great was the consternation of the tradesmen on the quay 
 who were under the impression that the whole of their dwellings 
 had been singled out for demolition, and in those clays no Muni- 
 cipal Council would have contested the will of the sovereign, who 
 had, however, no such intention. He was simply pointing out to the 
 Empress the house on the fifth floor of which he had lodged, when 
 he came to Paris from Brienne. I remember, when a youth, seeing 
 the tablet which had been placed in front of the house since 1853, 
 in commemoration of the fact. L? Empereur NapoUon Bonaparte^ 
 ojtfiricr d'ariiiierie, sortant tic Ncole de Uridine, demeurait au 5'"° 
 Stage de ceiie maison.
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 business to be— 1 am referring to the corps diplo- 
 matique. Mr. Buchanan, the United States 
 Minister in London, had no idea that all this was 
 a comedy and that the Emperor no more intended 
 to proceed to the Crimea than Mr. Buchanan 
 himself. He was under the impression that 
 this great show of goodwill to the Emperor was 
 a kind of ' God's speed ' on his journey to the 
 seat of war. At the reception at Walewski's the 
 Emperor went up to Mr. Buchanan expressing 
 the hope that he would see him at the forthcoming 
 Exhibition, and at the same time mentioning his 
 regret that the United States should not be repre- 
 sented more effectually — from an industrial and 
 manufacturing point of view — at the New Palais 
 de 1' Industrie. The fact is, there has been 
 already a good deal of comment on this absence 
 of competition on the part of the United States, 
 and in some quarters it has been construed 
 into a political manifestation of a hostile nature 
 to the Emperor himself, if not against the Empire. 
 To do the Emperor justice, it should be said that 
 he never speaks but in terms of the greatest 
 admiration of America ; and he probably feels 
 somewhat sore on the subject, though I am 
 certain that he did not show his annoyance. Mr. 
 Buchanan, with great tact, replied that he was 
 shortly going back to the United States, which 
 would make it difficult therefore for him to accept 
 the Emperor's invitation. ' Steam is a wonderful
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 151 
 
 thing in shortening distances ; ' said the Emperor. 
 4 True, sire ; ' replied the Minister with somewhat 
 less tact than he had shown before. ' The distance 
 between Paris and Washington is perhaps less 
 great than between Paris and Sebastopol, whither 
 your Majesty, I am told, is going.' This time 
 the Emperor was visibly annoyed. ' This is 
 entirely my own concern, and no one but myself 
 knows anything about it ; ' he said drawing him- 
 self up and leaving Mr. Buchanan to stare almost 
 open-mouthed at him. I can understand the 
 astonishment of the Minister, but he could not, 
 for the simple reason that he had neglected to 
 keep himself posted up in the ' undercurrents ' 
 of the moment, a thing which no diplomatist 
 should neglect. He had unwittingly reminded 
 Napoleon III. that all the cheers, all the speeches, 
 all the bunting, all the State pageantry of the last 
 few days were virtually the result of a false 
 pretence on his, Napoleon's, part, and Napoleon 
 did not like it." 
 
 Here ends the note which, together with the 
 one that preceded it, lets in more light on the 
 secret causes of France's share in the Crimean 
 War than any number of so-called political 
 histories. The first war of the Second Empire 
 was undertaken not for political but for social 
 purposes, namely, to give the new Empress 
 the sponsor she lacked to introduce her to the 
 sovereigns of Europe. The second (1859) was
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 waged to save the Emperor himself from assassin- 
 ation : the third (Mexico), perhaps, in order to 
 cover the frauds of Morny in connection with the 
 fecker bonds, but certainly to conciliate to a 
 certain degree the Papacy, and also to found a 
 French Empire beyond the seas : the fourth for 
 the sake of securing the tottering Napoleonic 
 dynasty to the Prince Imperial. I fancy I have 
 already proved the first of these four contentions ; 
 I will endeavour to make good the other three 
 in the course of these pages. 
 
 One thing is absolutely certain. Even amidst 
 the excitement caused by the Queen's return 
 visit to Napoleon III., Paris, if not the whole 
 of France, distinguished clearly between the 
 sovereign and the nation over which she ruled. 
 I am enabled to speak about this without refer- 
 ence to notes, for four months after the termina- 
 tion of this visit, I set foot in the French capital 
 for the first time, and although I was but a mere 
 lad, I paid a great deal of attention to the con- 
 versations around me, for the simple reason, per- 
 haps, that there was little else to do. The relatives 
 with whom I had come to stay were old 
 bachelors, our home was the habitual resort of a 
 number of men of note, and I had no companions 
 of my own age. I could not but listen, and being 
 blessed — or cursed — with an excellent memory, I 
 remember these conversations, after forty years, 
 as if I had heard them yesterday. And the sub-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 153 
 
 ject of the Queen's visit and France's relations 
 with England seemed inexhaustible, especially 
 after the return of the French troops from the 
 Crimea ; which spectacle I was privileged to wit- 
 ness three days after my arrival. It was on that 
 occasion that I also caught my first glimpse of 
 Napoleon III. as the troops marched past him on 
 the Place Venddme after he, the Emperor, had 
 ridden along the whole length of the Grand 
 Boulevards to receive them on the Place de la 
 Bastille. We had a "police-pass," and were 
 allowed to walk in the middle of the road, un- 
 hindered by any one. Though I did not speak 
 French as fluently as I do now, I understood 
 everything that was being said. " This is the 
 revenge for Moscow ; " remarked my grand-uncle 
 to a friend whom we met. — " You are mistaken, 
 dear friend," was the reply, " it is the stultifica- 
 tion of Waterloo and St. Helena." Though I 
 understood the words, I did not understand 
 their sense, and when we got home I asked, 
 for I had been taught to ask. My uncle 
 explained as well as he could to a lad of thirteen 
 and, presumptuous as it may sound, I did under- 
 stand. From that moment I have never ceased 
 to understand that no amount of diplomatic tall- 
 talk or soft-sawder will ever remove from the 
 French mind the dislike of the English. I under- 
 stood it still better when, a week later, a friend of 
 my relatives, a surgeon-major who had just
 
 »54 I \1>I k< l R.REN rS * >F 
 
 returned from the Crimea, paid them a visit. He 
 one o\ these courteous gentlemen, the like of" 
 whom arc fast dying out in France, but his 
 courtesy notwithstanding, he had not a good word 
 to say for any of the English officers with the ex- 
 ception of Colin Campbell. He did not for one 
 moment question their bravery and refrained from 
 commenting on their military talents. He was 
 simply dwelling upon their innate-, albeit carefully 
 suppressed, antagonism to the French. " The men 
 are different," he said, "they fraternize well 
 enough, especially the Irish and the French. I 
 remember," he continued, "when the more 
 minute accounts of the Queen's visit to Paris 
 came, that there was not a single one whose face 
 did not show the most intense disgust. I 
 understand but little English, but I under- 
 stood their faces well enough. The English 
 soldiers suffered a great deal more than 
 the French, mainly on account of their 
 inability to make the best of things, and on 
 account of their more naturally cleanly habits, but 
 much of this suffering might have been avoided 
 if the men had been allowed to come into closer 
 contact with ours, for there is no doubt that the 
 British troops would not have been above taking 
 a lesson from our men in many things. But the 
 officers systematically set their faces against this 
 comradeship. Yes, we have done wonderful 
 things, as the result will prove. In a score of
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 155 
 
 years from this day, England will have reaped 
 all the benefit from this campaign, and France 
 will be left in the cold when she wants an ally. 
 The French are. grown-up children and easily 
 pleased. It appears that Victor Emmanuel came 
 a month or so ago. That visit will cost France 
 another war." 
 
 He said much more, for which I cannot find 
 space here, but I may have occasion to quote now 
 and then from his recollections which he left to 
 my grand-uncles. They are chiefly anecdotal, 
 and refer to the Franco-Austrian rather than to 
 the Crimean War. He had been away nearly 
 two years, and the transformation Paris had 
 undergone during that time struck him greatly. 
 " I suppose it's all right. L'Empire means 
 peace at home. After all, French soldiers would 
 sooner fight for a cause not their own than not 
 fight at all. The Emperor knows this, but he 
 may fight once too often."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 There appears to be a kind of poetical justice 
 in the enjoyment Americans derive from their stay 
 in Paris, for according to Napoleon III. himself, 
 the idea of transforming the capital en bloc and at 
 one time, was suggested to him by one of their 
 countrymen. Truly, all the rulers before Napo- 
 leon III. had attempted to improve the capital 
 both architecturally and hygienically, but these 
 improvements were conceived and executed piece- 
 meal, with the result that the city, in the pre- 
 Haussmannic days, was like Mr. Wilfer in Our 
 Mutual Friend; it had never worn a complete 
 new suit of clothes. It is doubtful whether Paris 
 had any such ambition ; even the proposals in 
 olden times to endow it with a new monument, a 
 public square, or a street having always met with 
 most strenuous opposition on the plea of expense. 
 The Parisians of Louis XIV.'s reign, lampooned 
 and criticised that monarch and his architect 
 Mansart, as their successors lampooned and criti-
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF THE SECOND EMPIRE 157 
 
 cised Napoleon III. and his Prefect of the Seine 
 with this difference, that the subjects of "le Roi- 
 Soleil " merely looked at the financial conse- 
 quences of the proposed reforms, while the sub- 
 jects of Louis Napoleon professed to be 
 swayed in their opposition by loftier considerations 
 than those of money only. When Mansart got 
 frightened at the enormous outlay involved in his 
 royal master's plans, and more or less " muddled" 
 in his own accounts, Louis XIV. told him to "go 
 on building ; if you run short of funds, I will 
 advance the money ; the foreigner is sure to 
 reimburse us." 
 
 Napoleon III.'s faith in the foreigner's willing- 
 ness to pay liberally for the attractions provided 
 for him was probably as strong as that of the 
 Bourbon, but he did not possess the private wealth 
 of the latter to back his faith. Nevertheless, he 
 virtually took a leaf from the grand monarqucs, 
 book, but slightly transposed the text. "Go on 
 building, " he said to Haussmann ; "the foreigner 
 will reimburse the funds expended, but you must 
 ask the Parisians to advance them." The two 
 Bonapartes who ruled over France never dis- 
 guised their admiration for the Bourbons ; in 
 several instances they revived the latter's mis- 
 carried or uncompleted legislation. Some one 
 having remarked to Berryer : " Louis Napoleon 
 veut faire le lit de Henri IV. ; " the eminent 
 barrister replied : "Au moins il ne lui manquera
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 pas de paillasses." 1 N^pomucene Lemercier, 
 the greatest dramatist of the First Empire and 
 the sometime friend of Napoleon I., was more 
 direct, though perhaps less scathing in his 
 
 strictures on the Emperor's imitation of his pre- 
 ssors, especially in matters of ceremonial. 
 " Wms vous amuse/ a refaire le lit des Bourbon ; 
 vous n'y coucherez pas," he told him to his face. 
 Lemercier's ire had been provoked by the golden 
 bees on the Imperial mantle of the French Caesar. 
 He thought they were an imitation of the golden 
 lilies of the ancien rigime ; while in fact, the 
 golden lilies were an imitation of the golden bees 
 on the mantles of the Prankish kings. But the 
 bees had been forgotten for centuries, until a 
 French stadtholder of the Southern Netherlands 
 unearthed one of these cloaks at Tournay and 
 presented it to Louis XIV. Napoleon I. found it 
 in a cupboard in the Tuileries, and adopted the 
 bees to oust the lilies. 
 
 " The voice of the people may be the voice of 
 God," said Napoleon III. one day to my grand- 
 uncle when alluding to the Parisians' criticisms 
 on his transformation of their city ; " the voice 
 of the people may be the voice of God, but the 
 ditties the people yell, rather than sing are assuredly 
 composed by Satan. When a ruler does nothing 
 for them they shout about un roi faindant ; when 
 a ruler attempts to do something for them, they 
 
 1 Paillasse means both a pallet and a clown, or mountebank.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 159 
 
 misinterpret his motives, unless they invent some 
 which are altogether foreign to his thoughts. At 
 this present moment the opponents of my plans 
 have adopted the cry that I am attempting to do 
 too much at once, and that this attempt is 
 prompted by my wish to hold all Paris in the palm 
 of my hand by means of broad thoroughfares, 
 in which large masses of troops can move freely 
 and cannon play effectually. Another section of 
 society accuses me of wishing to reduce Paris to 
 a mere city of pleasure and make it the resort of 
 all the profligates and idlers — titled and untitled, 
 rich and poor, honest and dishonest — of the whole 
 world. That, according to the last-named critics, 
 is my method for stifling the nation's aspirations 
 towards a higher standard of political liberty. If 
 I had adopted Louis XIV.'s and my uncle's 
 system of improving the capital bit by bit, the 
 outcry and objections would have been just 
 the same, though different reasons might have 
 been alleged for them. You who have read the 
 memoirs dealing with the reign of Louis XIV. 
 and the First Empire know this as well as I do. 
 But neither shouting nor objections will prevent 
 me from carrying out my plans wholesale. I made 
 up my mind to that effect long ago. You asked 
 me just now for a Government situation for one 
 of your protdgds who is possessed of considerable 
 talents, but if he has talents why does he not use 
 them properly, instead of wasting them in a
 
 UNDERCl RRENTS OF 
 
 Government office at the rate of 1200 francs a 
 year?" asked the Emperor, apparently going 
 off at a tangent 
 
 For a moment or so my uncle was at a loss for 
 
 an answer, for he had asked himself the same 
 question many a time in connection with the 
 various candidates he had recommended to his 
 Majesty. 
 
 '• I suppose, sire," he said at last, " that in spite 
 of his talents, he is not clever." " Put it that 
 way, if you like," remarked the Emperor ; " I 
 should say because he has got no imagination, 
 for cleverness and imagination may in this 
 instance be synonymous. From your description 
 of the young fellow, I fancy he must be like a 
 young fellow I met with when I was in the 
 United States — alike in every respect save in the 
 possession of a strong imagination. Your young 
 friend knows geometry, mathematics, surveying, 
 and the rest ; he has an inkling of architecture ; 
 and all that knowledge which argues a consider- 
 able application on his part during his college 
 days, he wishes to place at the disposal of 
 the Government in exchange for a stool and 
 a salary of 1200 francs at the Ministere des 
 Travaux Publics (Board of Works). Well, 
 the young American to whom I refer, and to 
 whom I owe the idea of the wholesale transform- 
 ation I am attempting, knew all these, though 
 probably not so well as your young friend. But
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 161 
 
 he did not apply to the United States Public 
 Survey Office to help him to get a crust of bread 
 on a stipend which would have provoked the 
 scorn of nine-tenths of the working men in 
 America. He wanted to live, not to vegetate. 
 He was bent on making a fortune and a twelve- 
 month after my first meeting with him he was 
 worth two or three millions of dollars. He was 
 poor and looked poor, so poor as to be frequently 
 behindhand with the weekly payment at the 
 boarding house in New York where we both 
 stayed. But he never lost heart. One day he 
 came in, an hour late for dinner, but with a bio- 
 roll of paper under his arm. ' I am very sorry 
 to be late, but I have got hold of my fortune 
 to day,' he said by way of apology, pointing to 
 the papers, which turned out to be the complete 
 plans of a city for 40,000 inhabitants with its 
 churches, its public squares, its monuments, &c, 
 &c, including even an exchange. It looked like 
 a fairy city, but the plans were nevertheless care- 
 fully worked out ; it was the city of the future, 
 such as I intend to have in France, if I live long 
 enough. The young fellow had, however, clone 
 more than merely draw an attractive city on 
 paper ; he had bought the site of it — of course 
 conditionally ; entered into contracts with builders, 
 sanitary engineers, marble masons and landscape- 
 gardeners, and provided with these documents, 
 applied to a couple of big bankers with a keen 
 
 M
 
 UNDERCURREN I S OF 
 
 eye for possibilities. They were going to form a 
 
 syndicate and the works wen- to I"- started at once. 
 
 rh.it same evening I had a long conversation 
 
 with the young fellow. 'So your town will rise- 
 like Thebes at the sound of Amphion's lyre ?' 1 
 asked smilingly, for all this was very new to me. 
 • Mythology may be reduced to practice some- 
 time. ' he answered, 'but I do not suppose we 
 shall be as magical as all that. One thing, 
 however, is very certain. The whole of my plans 
 will be started on the same day, and if possible 
 will be completed within a few weeks of each 
 other. We are not going to follow the example 
 of Europe and build a street or half-a-street of 
 houses at a time.' Then the Emperor sat still 
 for a moment or two. " You are considerably 
 older than I am,' he said at last to my uncle ; 
 " yet you ma)- outlive me. When in days to come 
 people tell you that Napoleon III. transformed 
 Paris, you in your turn may tell them that he 
 owed the idea to an American of whom Europe 
 has probably never heard, for on the evening to 
 which I refer, I made up my mind to do what I 
 am doing, if ever I got the chance. That was 
 why I asked you once more about your protdgd, 
 between whose education and that of the American 
 there was probably little difference ; but the one, 
 had the true ideas of liberty in his blood, and the 
 Frenchman has been fed on the tradition that the 
 Government ought to do something for him, and
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 163 
 
 yet when the Government is willing to do every- 
 thing for him he revolts, though at the same time 
 he tries to line his pockets by the very schemes 
 he condemns." 
 
 The Emperor was right ; in spite of the fierce 
 outcry against his plans everybody took advan- 
 tage of them to line his own pockets. I am old 
 enough to remember all this ; for though I was 
 not thirteen when I came to Paris, at which 
 period the transformation of the capital was 
 virtually in its first stages, it never ceased during 
 the reign of Napoleon III., and as it went on, 
 fraudulent speculation and corruption of every 
 kind in connection with this transformation became 
 more and more rife. With the exception of the 
 Emperor himself, Fleury, Princesse Mathilde, and 
 perhaps Haussmann, there was not a single person 
 at the Ttiileries, whether male or female, and from 
 the highest to the lowest who did not benefit 
 materially and to a larger or smaller extent by 
 the facilities offered to him by his position for 
 surprising, worming out and intercepting early 
 news of Haussmann's projects. Of course, the 
 knowledge thus acquired had to be used cautiously 
 and according to the possessor's means and 
 opportunities. Few persons had the money 
 wherewith to buy house-property or land in the 
 doomed quarters, and when they had such funds, 
 either of their own or obtainable from friends, 
 they were obliged to proceed warily lest hurry 
 
 M 2
 
 UNDERCI RR] N rS Of 
 
 and a show of too great anxiety should "let 
 the cat out of the bag." 
 
 The construction of the Pont de 1' Alma (though 
 not under that name) was included from the very 
 beginning in the Emperor's and Haussmann's 
 plans. The- entire transformation of the village 
 of Chaillot, which for two hundred years previously 
 had enjoyed the title of faubourg, had, however, 
 not been decided upon publicly — although one 
 moment's reflection on the; part of those who 
 did think must have shown them that logically, 
 practically and artistically the one measure 
 would entail the other. The Pont de l'Alma 
 was finished about the beginning of 1856, for I 
 remember that I was taken to see it within a few 
 months of my arrival in Paris. And yet, a couple 
 of weeks previously, my elder grand-uncle, coming 
 home one day from the Tuileries, told his brother 
 that the Empress had bought the mansion of 
 Count Lauriston for her mother at a cost of three 
 millions of francs. The fact of such a purchase, 
 involving an outlay which must have appeared 
 enormous to most people, especially in those days 
 when hundreds and thousands of pounds were 
 not mentioned in conversation with the unconcern 
 of to-day, was calculated to impress itself upon the 
 mind of a lad of thirteen and particularly sharp 
 for his age. Nevertheless, he would probably 
 have forgotten all about it, but for the comments 
 to which the purchase gave rise during the next
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 165 
 
 week, which comments were revived about a 
 twelvemonth or eighteen months later when the 
 pickaxe began to do its work in Chaillot. The 
 most lenient conclusion to those comments as 
 affecting the purchaser herself was a consensus of 
 opinion " that she was very clever ; as clever 
 as Louis Philippe who invented European com- 
 plications — in order to contradict the reports, 
 having meanwhile profited by the fall of public 
 securities and their almost immediate restoration to 
 public confidence.'' 1 
 
 I am not prepared to say whether the compli- 
 ment to the Empress was genuine or not, but the 
 transaction was unquestionably a profitable one. 
 It would be difficult to compute the present value 
 of the property off-hand ; it is certainly worth 
 four times the amount of its purchase price forty 
 years ago. The site of the erstwhile mansion of 
 Count Lauriston and its immense gardens, which 
 were but a small part of the estate of the Comte 
 de Choiseul-Gouffier, have all been built on ; the 
 old-world village of Chaillot has become the 
 very modern Ouartier Marbceuf; the transfor- 
 mation took many years, but the Empress, as far 
 as I am aware, did not part with her land. A 
 mere ground lease for building purposes is a very 
 unusual thing in France, so we may take it that 
 the palatial dwellings which have been erected 
 on the site of the Comtesse de Montijo's former 
 town residence are part and parcel ol the property.
 
 I NDERCURREN is 01 
 
 •• It is a decent provision for .1 rainy day, 1 
 said nn grand-uncle in the latter years <>l the 
 S >nd Empire, when in spite oi his personal 
 affection for the Emperor, or just because ol that 
 affection, he began to doubt the stability <>l the 
 Empire. "A decent provision for a rainy day," 
 repeated Alexandre Dumas the Elder, who 
 happened to be seated by his side, and who 
 neither liked the dynasty nor believed in its 
 duration. 'Say an ark for the coming Hood 
 and you will be nearer the mark." And forth- 
 with there was a positive flood on his part of 
 historical and literary anecdote in connection 
 with the slowly rising Ouartier Marbceuf. I feel 
 perfectly certain that not one of these anecdotes 
 has ever been published, and I should like to give 
 them all, but the space I have mapped out has 
 been overstepped more than once and I must 
 not extend it. At the time of this interesting 
 and impromptu lecture — for it was nothing less, 
 seeing that it lasted for nearly an hour — I was over 
 twenty, and though already then fully confident of 
 my memory had begun to take notes. I have 
 these by me now and they would make two or 
 three chapters. As it is I must confine myself to 
 a very few extracts. 
 
 " It is very curious," began Dumas, " that as 
 earl)- as 1842 or 1843 Balzac foresaw the eventual 
 transformation of the village of Chaillot into a 
 fashionable quarter. As usual, he conceived a
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 167 
 
 vast scheme for making money in connection 
 with it by buying up the whole of the land. 
 Equally as a matter of course, no one would 
 embark in the enterprise. They treated the 
 project, as they were in the habit of treating all 
 Balzac's plans, as purely visionary. Visionary 
 the\- no doubt were, including as they did, the 
 publication of a gigantic edition of Balzac's 
 works in separate volumes, each volume to have 
 attached to it a ticket in a lottery, the prize in 
 which was to be a plot of ground or a mansion. 
 It would take too long to explain the whole of 
 the complex project, but the presentiment with 
 regard to the destiny of Chaillot was right 
 enough. At any rate, one man to whom that 
 presentiment had been communicated, believed 
 in it and almost immediately acted upon the 
 belief — namely, Emile de Girardin. In less than 
 a twelvemonth afterwards he bought from M. 
 May, the chaplain to the English Embassy, the 
 former mansion of the Count de Choiseul-Gouffier, 
 in the grounds of which there stood at that time 
 a Protestant place of worship. 
 
 "Contrary to his custom," Dumas went on. 
 " Balzac did not altogether abandon his scheme 
 when he found his initial combination impracticable. 
 He was constantly meditating fresh ones in 
 connection with it, and in the end of '46 or the 
 beginning of '47 he removed to an apartment in 
 the Rue des Batailles, opposite the mansion
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 inhabited by Regnault de Saint- Jem d'Angely 
 under the First Empire. I5.il/ac said he wished 
 to be on the spot to watch events more closely, 
 but there were no events to watch. There were, 
 however, a good many "houses with histories.' 
 There was the house where Barras died in '29 
 and where the Government tried to lay its hands 
 on his Memoirs 1 ; there was the house where 
 lor more than twenty years a young girl belonging 
 to a family of the ancien regime waited in bridal 
 dress for her supposed bridegroom — I say, sup- 
 posed, for the man with whom she had fallen in 
 love was a general of the First Republic and 
 First Empire, to part her from whom her 
 parents had locked her up in this then secluded 
 mansion. I have an idea that some one must have 
 told this story years ago to Charles Dickens, who 
 adapted it for an episode of one of his novels - 
 
 " I fancy Balzac intended to weave this and other 
 stories connected with the place into one big plot. 
 He hinted as much when he asked me to share 
 the apartment in the Rue des Batailles. But 
 there were many reasons why I did not wish to 
 collaborate with Balzac, and least of all did I wish 
 to live under the same roof with him. His ideas of 
 the comforts of home and mine differed altogether. 
 I do not object to rise early in order to set to 
 
 1 By the time this is in print, the English translation of the com- 
 plete edition of Barras' Memoirs will have appeared both in 
 England and America. 
 
 - Great Expectations.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 169 
 
 work, but I hate having to dress and go out at 
 unearthly hours in order to avoid process-servers 
 and sheriff's officers who might come to arrest me 
 for debt or to seize my furniture. I never put 
 these officials to any inconvenience in that way. 
 They know that at whatever time of the day they 
 come, my door is always open to them. 1 
 
 " Finding that I turned a deaf ear to his hints, 
 Balzac induced Jules Sandeau to come and live 
 with him. No two men could have been more 
 unlike than these two, but Balzac meant well, and 
 but for him one of Sandeau's best works would, 
 perhaps, not have been written. I am referring 
 to Mariane which Sandeau wrote in the Rue 
 des Batailles while still distracted with grief at 
 his rupture with Georges Sand. Sandeau had 
 comparatively few wants and could not understand 
 Balzac's constant worries about money. Balzac, 
 •on the other hand, though he tried to cheer 
 Sandeau in his love troubles, only understood 
 them in the abstract. If anything were needed 
 to convince me that Balzac was one of the 
 greatest geniuses that ever lived, it would be 
 his marvellous power of describing feelings which 
 he never experienced. 
 
 "At that particular period Balzac had come to 
 the definite conclusion that, in order to impress 
 
 1 In order to make Dumas's meaning perfectly clear with r< .Mil 
 to his treatment of creditors and that of Balzac, I must refer the 
 reader to An Englishman in Paris, vol. i., < hapters ii. and iii. It 
 will obviate repetitions on my part.
 
 I NDERCURREN l> * )] 
 
 publishers and induce them to subscribe to His. 
 most extravagant terms, it was absolutely neces 
 sar) to make a great show. Consequently, the 
 rooms in the Rue des Batailles were crammed 
 with the most costly furniture ; sumptuous hang- 
 and velvet-pile carpets met the eye every- 
 where, and scores of wax candles in exquisitely 
 chiselled sconces were distributed alone- the walls ; 
 for let me tell you, the visits of publishers were 
 always timed for the evening. And, until the 
 t leaked out, the publishers were impressed. 
 The whole affair was a cleverly staged act of a 
 comedy, even to the guests invited for the nonce, 
 who. to show their contempt for all this display of 
 wealth bred from familiarity with it, stood on the 
 silken cushions and spilled the ashes of their 
 pipes and cigars everywhere. Of course the 
 publisher did not dare to haggle with two such 
 pashas of literature ; Sandeau playing his part 
 from sheer good nature. At the break of day, 
 though, the apartment became deserted, and 
 when a few hours later, the bailiff rang the bell in 
 the execution of his delicate functions, he was 
 told that M. de Balzac was only a friend of the 
 tenant whom he occasionally honoured with his 
 company." 
 
 The scheme conceived by Balzac for buying up 
 a whole neighbourhood was even beyond the pri- 
 vate resources of so highly placed a personage as 
 the Empress Kugcnie ; to form syndicates or limited
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 171 
 
 companies to that effect, would have probably de- 
 feated its own purpose, for it would have let too 
 many people into secrets which, I repeat, had in 
 the majority of cases been unfairly obtained. 
 So the favoured recipients of these secrets or 
 merely clever eavesdroppers, instead of combin- 
 ing, determined to work each on his own 
 account. Most of them were unable to raise 
 sufficient funds wherewith to buy the smallest bit 
 of house property ; they merely sold their know- 
 ledge to the leaseholder of the dwelling, and he 
 in his turn hastened to renew his lease. Of 
 course, he was careful to keep his own counsel, lest 
 the landlord, having too many applications for 
 renewals at one time, should become suspicious 
 and raise the rents. Repeated in six or seven 
 different quarters, although with but one tenant in 
 each, the sale of such information frequently 
 yielded the considerable sum of between 200,000 
 and 300,000 francs to the vendor, and I could 
 name at least a score of such vendors in the very 
 immediate entourage of the Imperial couple. 
 Those who were farther removed from the august 
 presence, and to whom, therefore, the information 
 came at third and fourth hand, had to be satisfied 
 with less. But I am not exaggerating in comput- 
 ing the money thus obtained at over one million 
 sterling. 
 
 Practically this money came out of the coffers 
 of the Paris Municipality, for it need scarcely be
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 said that the lessees in their subsequent claims for 
 compensation did not forget to reckon the sums 
 disbursed in the purchase of their information, and 
 do what they would, the Municipality were found 
 in the end powerless to resist those claims. The 
 original intention on their part had been to let the 
 majority of leases " fall in " before commencing 
 operations in this or that quarter. Under such 
 conditions the ground alone would have had to 
 be paid for. The lessees, with their fresh leases 
 locked in their desks, simply sneered at the 
 Municipality's announced intention to exercise 
 patience. They believed the Civic Fathers to 
 be ignorant of the negotiations they the lessees 
 had just concluded with their superior landlords. 
 The Civic Fathers were not as ignorant as the 
 es thought them, and in spite of the obstacles 
 thrown in their way repeated their intention to 
 wait, although the period of waiting might be 
 prolonged. Thereupon the lessees forced the 
 Municipality's hand. They set up claims to the 
 effect "that the intention to evict them at the 
 expiration of their leases constituted an act of 
 actual eviction entitling them to damages." ] 
 And preposterous though the contention seemed 
 and seems, its validity was finally admitted by the 
 highest tribunal in France. 
 
 This decision paved the way for a system of 
 
 1 I have condensed the claim into non-legal language, but taken 
 care to preserve the spirit of the plea.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 173 
 
 wholesale exaction and jobber)-, the like of which 
 it would be difficult to find in the annals of any- 
 modern community in Europe. Equally difficult 
 would it be to find parallels to some of the 
 claims for compensation except in the librettos 
 of Mr. Gilbert and kindred writers. To begin 
 with, there was the claim of the owner of the 
 ground and dwelling, or of the ground only 
 through which the new thoroughfares were to 
 pass. He was simply extortionate in virtue of 
 his ownership. One case in point must suffice. 
 One of these owners had as good as sold a plot 
 of ground to a firm of hydraulic engineers for 
 75,000 francs, which sum he professed to be 
 glad to accept. Pending the signing of the 
 documents, he got wind of M. Haussmann's 
 project of cutting a new thoroughfare across 
 what was still his property. He declined to 
 ratify his bargain with the engineers, and eventu- 
 ally claimed 1,800,000 francs. The valuation jury- 
 awarded him 950,000 francs. Then there was 
 the claim of the principal tenant, who. as a rule, 
 occupied the ground-floor part of the premises, 
 including the shop. He could not claim com- 
 pensation for being disturbed in his actual tenancy, 
 inasmuch as the Municipality had announced 
 its intention not to disturb him ; nevertheless, 
 he claimed in virtue of the decision of the Court 
 of Cassation, to which I alluded just now ; and 
 moreover magnified his claim on the plea of the
 
 i MM K( URR] NTS OF 
 
 prospective harm his heirs and successors would 
 suiter. " IWit.'' objected the leading counsel for 
 the Municipality, "if my instructions are correct, 
 the claimant's lease which has just been renewed 
 will not expire for another twelve years ; the 
 claimant is close upon seventy, his wife is but a 
 few years younger. They will scarcely remain in 
 business until they arc eighty; and although 
 they are unquestionably entitled to damages in 
 virtue of the judgment of the Court of Cassation 
 that judgment makes no provision for the 
 hypothetical injury clone to heirs or mere business 
 successors. Besides the former in this instance 
 do not exist at all, seeing that the claimant is 
 childless, and will in all probability remain so at 
 his advanced age." To which the claimant's 
 counsel made rejoinder: "My learned brother 
 should not take it for granted that my client will 
 go childless to his grave, because my client 
 himself is far from cherishing such convictions ; 
 he belongs to the Hebrew race, and the miracle 
 that was vouchsafed to Abraham and Sarah may 
 be repeated in his favour, unless my learned 
 brother wishes to imply that the age of miracles 
 is past." 
 
 Finally, there was a category of tenants, mostly 
 
 occupants of sets of apartments who claimed 
 
 compensation on purely sentimental grounds. 
 
 1 o recapitulate their alleged grievances one by 
 
 one would lead me too far afield ; one gentleman
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 175 
 
 pleaded that his invalid daughter could see from 
 the windows of the apartment from which he was 
 to be dislodged, the steeple of the church where 
 her mother worshipped when a girl. The majority 
 indulged in " tall talk " about " the roofs that had 
 sheltered their fathers and the spot where their 
 children's cradles stood." And though in reality 
 three-fourths of those who talked thus had not 
 even been born in Paris — for barely one-third of 
 the Paris population are natives of the capital 
 the valuation jury generally admitted their claims ; 
 ostensibly in order "to teach the Government a 
 lesson ; " in reality because each of their decisions 
 created a precedent by which they in their turn 
 hoped to benefit at some future time. 
 
 Thus much about the doings of the valuation 
 jury and claimants while they were both left to 
 their own devices, expectations of immediate or 
 contingent spoil, and so-called political independ- 
 ence. The latter feeling, however, was soon raised 
 to the boiling-point by newspaper articles and 
 pamphlets. Of one of these pamphlets I would 
 say a few words, inasmuch as it was the work of 
 the late Jules Ferry, at that time an obscure, and 
 probably deservedly obscure, barrister, like so 
 many other shining lights of the Third Republic 
 that was to be. It was most widely circulated ; 
 I doubt, however, whether throughout the whole 
 of France there were a hundred people who read 
 it from beginning to end ; most people giving up
 
 I NDERCl R.RENTS 01 
 
 I after half a dozen pages, for it was 
 ilull to .1 degree, and what was worse, dull without 
 being convincing, and, as the Emperor said, "dull 
 under take preten< Its great sale was due to 
 
 its clever title: a perversion ol the title of the 
 French version of Hoffmann's Weird Talcs — 
 Les Conies Fantastiques a" Hoffmann. M. 
 Ferry had altered this into Les Comptes Fan- 
 rues d'JFfaussmann ; but the happy thought 
 due to two of Dufaure's secretaries, MM. 
 Duval and Delprat, M. Ferry's friends, who 
 had hit upon it during a conversation at an 
 Orleanist's social gathering, and made a present 
 of the idea to the future Prime Minister, who died 
 as President of the Senate. "After all," re- 
 marked Napoleon III., when he had read the 
 brochure, " I am glad that M. Ferry's pamphlet 
 is so dull : if it had been as brilliant as its title, 
 M. Ferry would be in the painful position of 
 having to bring an action for libel against his face 
 and appearance." The remark was spiteful, but 
 absolutely just. In those days Ferry was a 
 cantankerous likeness of Offenbach. Later on the 
 likeness grew less apparent, and the cantanker- 
 ousness more. I used to meet him frequently 
 on the boulevards in company with Herold, the 
 future Prefect of the Seine under the Third 
 Republic, and the son of the celebrated composer 
 of Zauipa and Le Pre 4 anx Clercs, who had been a 
 friend of my grand-uncle. I liked Herold, who
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 177 
 
 had one of the most wonderful memories I have 
 ever met with, but I always avoided him when 
 Ferry was with him. My grand-uncle, seeing 
 them together one day, exclaimed, " Here goes 
 Zampa's heir in custody of a gendarme." 
 
 M. Ferry charged Haussmann with having 
 purposely underrated the cost of his proposed 
 improvements. " That is nominally true," said 
 the Emperor, "but in reality Haussmann has 
 not underrated the cost of the improvements, 
 he has only underrated the greed of the Paris 
 bourgeois, just as he would have underrated 
 M. Ferry's impudence if he had attempted to 
 transform him into a fair critic and a gentleman." 
 The Emperor was right once more : the greed of 
 the Paris tradesman and bourgeois burdened the 
 budget of the capital with sixteen millions sterling 
 in as many years, and this in addition to the reason- 
 able indemnities which might have been claimed in 
 virtue of the judgment of the Court of Cassation. 
 At least 15 per cent, of this money stuck to 
 the fingers of more or less unscrupulous lawyers, 
 retained by shady and still more unscrupulous 
 agencies, which for a minimum commission of 
 10 per cent, on all the sums wrung from the 
 Municipality, set the machinery of the law in 
 motion on behalf of the smallest and utterly 
 unimportant shopkeepers — such as dairymen, 
 fruiterers, greengrocers, coal-sellers, &c. — all 
 of whom, but for these agents' instigation, would 
 
 N
 
 I NDERCl R.RENTS 01 
 
 have removed to adjacent streets or adjacent 
 premises without losing their customers. Theor- 
 ganisation of these agencies was little short <>i per- 
 fect ; their recruiting of fraudulent auxiliaries sum 
 i, to a degree. One of these pseudo-Aommes 
 d'affaires, with the successors of whom Paris 
 .swarms even at present, managed to get hold of 
 about ten quires of old paper bearing the Govern- 
 ment stamp. Each of the sheets served for the 
 making of a lease supposed to have been granted 
 in 1S50. He himself never put pen to paper: 
 he simply sold each of the sheets to the various 
 agencies in need of them at the rate of 10,000 
 francs apiece. The ,£100,000 sterling thus 
 earned were all lost in Stock Exchange specula- 
 tions, and after the fall of the Empire he boasted 
 of what he had done. When the Commune 
 exploded, he came to London and set up business 
 as a wine-merchant: he is now leading a miserable 
 and precarious existence in another capital of 
 Europe. 
 
 Ante-dated leases, made with the connivance of 
 both subscribers to such documents, were, after all, 
 but one wheel in the huge mechanism of fraud. 
 The agencies provided false inventories, false 
 balance-sheets, false sets of account-books, false 
 stock in the shape of blocks of wood, neatly 
 wrapped up and suitably labelled; they repainted 
 and redecorated the shops of their clients ; and for 
 many weeks before and after the time appointed
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 179 
 
 for the regulation visit of the valuation jury, the 
 establishment was crowded with customers from 
 morn till night, which sham customers were 
 attended to by equally sham assistants, hired at 
 the rate of three francs per day. In fact, no stage- 
 manager of genius ever arranged his scenic 
 effects with greater forethought than they. 
 
 It would be rash to pretend that all the lawyers 
 these agencies employed were their accomplices ; 
 there were some honourable exceptions, and they 
 were their dupes. One of the latter was pleading 
 one day in behalf of a grocer in a moderate way 
 of business. Confidently flourishing the day-book 
 of his client — for the agency frequently left the 
 choice of a barrister to the claimant himself — he 
 began to enumerate the customers, and asked for 
 considerable damages. The counsel for the City 
 of Paris interrupted him. "My learned brother 
 need not trouble himself," he said ; " I know that 
 day-book, by heart, it is the grocers' day- 
 book ; it has done duty already several times." 
 As a matter of course, the "learned brother" 
 grew very indignant, and proceeded to refute the 
 allegation. " I am sorry to insist," replied his 
 opponent, " but if you will turn to page 7 3, you will 
 find my initials." The bare fact was this. During 
 a previous trial, the amounts inscribed in that da) - 
 book, and quoted in support of an exorbitant claim, 
 had struck the counsel for the City of Paris as 
 being too exaggerated. A vague suspicion of 
 
 N 2
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 the truth had dawned upon him then, and he had 
 asked to look at the day-book itself, and while 
 pretending to add up figures had quickly initialed 
 the page. He felt almost convinced that he would 
 I with that account-book again. But, though 
 u seems scarcely credible, the claimant got his 
 damages. 
 
 On the morning after this decision, the Em- 
 peror, contrary to his habit, was up betimes, and 
 when Fleury went in to have his usual chat, he 
 found him dressed and ready to go out. A few 
 minutes later, Haussmann, who had evidently 
 been sent for, made his appearance. "You and 
 I are going for a walk, mon chcr prtfet" was 
 Napoleon's greeting. " I am afraid I only know 
 my Parisian subjects theoretically, and I wish to 
 get a little more practical knowledge of them. I 
 will take another leaf from my uncle's book ; he 
 used to go for walks in the morning with Duroc, 
 and he told my mother that one of these strolls 
 was worth a hundred reports from Fouche. That 
 was after he had been plainly given to under- 
 stand that a ruler must pay through the nose for 
 any and everything he wants for his personal use 
 and gratification, and a still more extravagant 
 price if the object he desires be intended for the 
 benefit of the nation at large. I will tell you 
 how it happened. He and Duroc were walking 
 along one early morn, when in the window of a 
 very small bric-a-brac shop my uncle noticed a
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 181 
 
 bronze statuette, the companion of which was in 
 the Louvre. ' What is the price of that 
 bronze ? ' he asked the dealer, who was 
 perched aloft on a ladder, dusting the front of 
 his place. ' Don't worry me,' growled the man, 
 without troubling to look down or come down ; 
 'you will find it too high for your pocket.' 
 My uncle, who was in an amiable mood 
 just then, insisted. ' Well, suppose I say 
 four hundred francs, what then ? ' was the grudg- 
 ing answer. ' Then I should take it,' shouted 
 my uncle ; for the dealer had not stirred. This 
 time he looked down and caught sight of my 
 uncle's face. He descended immediately, but 
 gave no further sign of having recognised him. 
 His tone, however, altered. 'I said "suppose," 
 monsieur ; I was only joking ; in reality it is two 
 thousand francs.' ' Very well,' remarked the 
 Emperor, ' I will take it at that.' ' I am afraid 
 I cannot let you have it,' objected the man. 'A 
 gentleman who saw it a few days ago told me that 
 its companion statuette is in the Louvre, and if the 
 authorities have set their minds on having it, I will 
 not part with it for less than five thousand francs. 
 ' Do you know who I am ?' said my uncle. The 
 man stammered and turned pale. ' I see you do, 
 and I mean to make you stick to your bargain. 
 There is no more reason why you should rob the 
 nation at large than that you should rob a private
 
 i NDERCURREN is I >i nil SECOND EMPIRE 
 
 individual. I mem to have it at the price you 
 d me.' 
 ■• M\ uncle had the statuette, but I am not of my 
 uncle's mettle. I cannot force the Parisians to sell 
 
 their houses at the price they would sell them to 
 a private individual; but I must find a way of 
 meeting craft and greed. Direct contact with the 
 Parisian may suggest a way. That is why I wish 
 \ on to go lor a walk."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 If Napoleon III. had been the most arrant 
 coward on earth — and he was the very opposite 
 of a coward — Orsini's attempt on his life would 
 have been calculated to convert him into a man 
 of courage. I am at all times reluctant to enter 
 into a man's religious belief or absence of belief, 
 but the intended victim who had escaped from 
 such an attempt as that of January 14th, 1858, 
 could only come to the conclusion that he bore 
 a charmed life. If religiously disposed he would 
 simply attribute his escape to a direct interven- 
 tion of Providence ; if a fatalist like the Emperor 
 was supposed to be, his fatalism would be inten- 
 sified a hundredfold, and henceforth he would 
 advance on the road mapped out for him by 
 that Fate — not only mentally blindfolded, but 
 disdaining to take the ordinary precautions of the 
 sightless. That this was absolutely the case with 
 Napoleon III., I shall have no difficult}- in proving 
 as I proceed.
 
 I NDERCURREN l> OF 
 
 The attempt o\ January i.|th, 1858, was the 
 fourth directed against Louis Napoleon's life 
 during the ten years that had passed since his 
 memorable interview with Lamartine. Whatever 
 illusions he may have entertained with regard to 
 the r$le of the police as a protector in the three 
 previous ones, he could not possibly have re- 
 mained in such a "fool's paradise" where the 
 fourth was concerned. It is more than doubtful, 
 though, whether Louis Napoleon deceived him- 
 self at any time or was deceived as to the 
 collective power of the police to frustrate the 
 igns o\ the would-be assassin, or to hamper 
 or detect the doings of secret societies. In 
 a former book I have given a conversation 
 between him and my grand-uncle on the subject, 1 
 and everything leads me to believe that he 
 became more sceptical upon all these points as 
 time went on. He knew that he could count 
 upon a few Corsicans such as Alessandri and 
 Griscelli to defend his life at the risk of their 
 own ; he knew that they were intelligent to a 
 degree, absolutely loyal to him, and as absolutely 
 unscrupulous with regard to the rest of the 
 world ; but he also knew that of the so-called 
 organisation at the Prefecture of Police they were 
 things apart ; that, if anything, they despised that 
 institution which in its turn hampered them on 
 
 1 .1/ . ch. II., London: Wm. Heinemann ; 
 
 Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 185 
 
 every occasion, either from sheer professional 
 jealousy, or in order to court favour with its chief 
 for the time being, or to plot for the return to 
 office of a former one ; each of these chiefs 
 fancying himself a Fouche, a Real, a Desmarets 
 and a Dubois rolled into one ; though in reality 
 the whole of the five prefects who held office 
 during the second Napoleonic period — namely, 
 Maupas, Blot, the two Pietris (Pierre- Marie and 
 Joachim), and Boitelle — had not together as much 
 brain as the famous Due d'Otrante by himself or 
 as one of his principal coadjutors. 
 
 This does not mean that the five men I have 
 just named were devoid of intellect or that their 
 lieutenants such as Hyrvoix, Lagrange, and the 
 lieutenants of the latter, Canler, Claude, Jacob 
 and others, were incapable. Far from it. They 
 all had a great deal of talent ; nay, Canler and 
 Claude were geniuses in their own way, but 
 neither they nor their official superiors had 
 sufficient genius or talent for the dual task, 
 circumstances and the prevailing spirit of intrigue 
 imposed upon them. They were confronting the 
 enemy with the fear of being shot in the back by 
 their own men, or to put it mildly — of being 
 deserted by them at the most critical moment. 
 They were not only called upon to look to 
 the safety of the dynasty and its actual chief, 
 but had to guard against their being dislodged 
 from their own position by the plotting of
 
 I NDER< LJRRENTS 01 
 
 tlnir pred< . or the machinations ol their 
 
 •■ I'hcy are dancing on the 
 tight-rope the whole of the time they are in offi 
 said the Emperor, speaking of his prefects of poli 
 a few months alter Orsini's attempt; "they are 
 dancing on a tight rope the whole of the time 
 they art- in office, and you cannot expect the tight- 
 rope- ilancer to pay any attention to what is going 
 on below or around him. He has quite enough 
 to do to lo»»k to his own balance even if the rope 
 on which he is performing is rigorously left alone 
 by his rivals; and in this case it is not. Carlier 
 tugged at the rope of Maupas, Maupas tugged 
 at the rope of Pietri, and Pietri in his turn tugs at 
 the rope of Boitelle. I did think,'' he went on 
 after a moment, "' that Pietri after his own nasty 
 tumble would not try to endanger the safety of 
 others, especially after the care I took of him, but 
 it appears I was mistaken. After all," he com- 
 mented with a smile, " they are only doing what 
 I did myself ; I tugged at the rope on which 
 Louis Philippe was performing: Louis Philippe and 
 his father before him tugged at the rope of the 
 Bourbons ; the Bourbons tugged at the rope of my 
 uncle ; the d'Orleans are tugging at mine and so 
 on till the end of time. 
 
 This conversation, for which I can fix no date, 
 
 :ing that the note which relates to it bears 
 
 none, must have taken place, as I remarked,. 
 
 shortly after Orsini's attempt, but how long after
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 187 
 
 I cannot say. Boitelle, Perslgny's friend and 
 erstwhile fellow-soldier, had replaced Pietri (the 
 elder), who had shown a most lamentable want 
 of foresight which caused great loss of life, much 
 suffering and would have caused the death of the 
 Emperor and the Empress but for a miracle. I 
 am not exaggerating ; the carriage that conveyed 
 the Imperial couple and General Roguet, the 
 Emperor's aide-de-camp, was literally riddled 
 with projectiles ; no less than seventy-six of 
 these were subsequently found imbedded in the 
 panels and other parts ; one of the horses wounded 
 in twenty-five places was killed on the spot, the 
 other had to be slaughtered ; the three footmen 
 and the coachman were all severely hurt ; General 
 Roguet's deep, though not fatal, flesh wound just 
 below the right ear bled so profusely that the 
 Empress's dress was absolutely saturated with 
 blood as she entered the opera. Finally, a bullet 
 had gone right through the Emperor's hat. I 
 am only referring to the Emperor and his 
 immediate entourage on that night ; the total 
 number of wounded was 156, at least a dozen 
 of whom died of their injuries. 
 
 Yet the whole of this butchery might and could 
 have been prevented, for there is not the least 
 doubt that the French authorities were warned in 
 time both of Orsini's departure from London, ol 
 his contemplated journey to Paris and oi his fell 
 purpose. Billault, the Minister of the Interior,
 
 I \hl RCURREN rS 01 
 
 ■ ■:. the Prefect of the Police, Lagrange, the 
 Chief of the Municipal Police, and Hubert, the 
 superintendent specially entrusted with the service 
 in other words with the sur- 
 veillance of the visitors to Paris and of those 
 
 lentS without a fixed abode — were aware 
 of the presence of Pieri and Gomez in the capital, 
 if not ^( Orsini's. Nevertheless, both remained 
 
 ctly (vrr until the mischief had been done. 
 We lay no stress on the passage of Morny's 
 speech at the opening of the Chamber stating 
 that the provincial branches of the secret societies 
 looking forward to some upheaval in mid- 
 January, which upheaval would be followed by 
 important movements. These periodical an- 
 nouncements were part of the policy of the 
 Second Empire during the first ten years of 
 its existence. They were intended to strike 
 terror into the hearts of the peace-loving 
 population, and to make them rally still closer 
 round a dynasty which was supposed to hold the 
 revolutionaries and republicans — the terms were 
 almost synonymous in those days — in check by 
 
 ring and forestalling every one of their plans. 
 
 In spite of everything that has been written and 
 
 said on the subject, it is a moot point whether 
 
 was one secret society in France of sufficient 
 
 ht or dimension to constitute a serious 
 danger to the dynasty, or whether the Emperor 
 or any of his most confidential advisers believed in
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 189 
 
 the existence of such. But at the particular period 
 of which I treat an openly avowed belief in them 
 was still part of the system. Four years later (1862) 
 the system is absolutely reversed. The secret 
 societies are supposed to have vanished from off 
 the face of the land — their disappearance being 
 due of course to the strong and energetic govern- 
 ment which leaves no cause for dissatisfaction 
 anywhere. The alarmists who would still believe 
 in secret societies must be dissuaded from their 
 belief by the most delightful but at the same time 
 most effectual means France has at her disposal 
 to that effect, namely the stage, and the Emperor 
 himself takes the initiative in this direction. He 
 commissions M. Camille Doucet (the late life- 
 secretary of the Academie who died recently), the 
 then official superintendent of theatres, to find the 
 Aristophanes who will make people laugh and, in 
 making them laugh, disarm their fears. M. Doucet 
 applied successively to Theodore Barriere, Louis 
 Bouilhet and Amedee Rolland, 1 all of whom 
 attempted the task but without success and who 
 each received 6,000 frs. for his trouble. What 
 they failed to accomplish, though, was achieved 
 in another way by Alexandre Pothey, one of their 
 
 1 Thdodore Barriere, the famous author of Les Faux Bonshotnmes, 
 Les Fillcs de Marbre, and co-author with Henri Murger of the 
 dramatic version of La Vic de Bohkme. Louis Bouilhet, the friend 
 of Gustave Flaubert. Ame'dee Rolland, the founder of the satii 
 journal Lc Diogene and a well-known playwright, though urn 
 known in England or America.
 
 UNDERCURREN rs 0] 
 
 friends, in his satire of La Muette\ the name of 
 the secret societ) which baffles all the researches 
 of the police. There is no evidence that Pothe) 
 ever ->a\v Napoleon 111. in private, yet his satire 
 bears aremarkable likeness to the story told by 
 the Emperor to my -rand-uncle. 1 
 
 S eptical though the Emperor may have been 
 with regard to the existence of secret societies in 
 France, he could not pretend to ignore the 
 existence of at least one outside France. Many 
 ■s before his advent to the imperial throne he 
 had become affiliated to the Carbonaria, and it 
 was the Carbonaria which through Mazzini and 
 ( >rsini claimed the fulfilment of the project to 
 which he had subscribed at the time of his ad- 
 mission. That project of which Lord Castlereagh 
 had already a copy in i S 1 3 and which before that 
 had been submitted to George III. aimed at the 
 establishment of an Italian Empire, limited by the 
 Alps on the one side and the sea on the other three, 
 with Rome as its capital and an Emperor chosen 
 from either the reigning families of Sardinia, 
 Naples or England. 2 
 
 In 1S58 the most powerful living subscriber to 
 this document was unquestionably Napoleon III., 
 
 1 La Muette made Pothey famous. He was originally a wood 
 engraver. His best-known book however, is Le Capital nc Regnier, 
 a precursor of /> Colon'! /'aiiiollot. 
 
 - Both the act of affiliation and a copy of the project were seen 
 by Monsignor Louis Gaston de Se'gur, Arch-Canon of Saint Denis 
 during the Second Empire.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 191 
 
 Emperor of the French. But, powerful though he 
 was, he dared not dispatch 300,000 men across the 
 Alps in discharge of a purely personal obligation, 
 which was moreover contracted in his pre-imperial 
 days. We need not inquire whether Louis 
 Napoleon's compact with the Carbonaria, dating 
 as it did from so many years previously, was 
 generally known in France. I was a lad of 
 fifteen then and, as I have had occasion to remark, 
 constantly thrown into the society of my elders, 
 nearly all of whom were more or less behind the 
 scenes. I remember having heard vague allusions 
 to the danger the Emperor ran "from the knife 
 •of the hired assassin ; " I heard the names of 
 Mazzini, Karl Marx, and Bakounine in connection 
 with conspiracies, but until four or five months 
 before the attempt of January the 14th none of these 
 conversations tried to establish the existence of 
 a vast organisation to deprive the Emperor of his 
 life. The three principal attempts up to that time, 
 including that of Kehlse, were supposed to have 
 been instigated by small groups, not necessarily 
 Italians. My uncles' friends argued that the nine- 
 serious attempts on Louis Philippe's life and the 
 one on the Due d'Aumale were apparently not 
 dictated by questions affecting the King's foreign 
 policy ; that with the exception of Fieschi all those 
 would-be regicides were Frenchmen ; but the) 
 observed also that the fact of Kehlse, Sinabaldi, 
 Silvani and the rest being foreigners did not
 
 I NDER< lURRENTS 01 
 
 absolutely imply either a far-reaching conspira< \ 
 or a conspiracy from without. 1 1 1 « - plotters were 
 .is likely to be Republicans or Legitimists as Italian 
 revolutionaries. Soon after the Coup dEtat there 
 had been an attempt to kill Louis Napoleon by 
 means of an imitation ol Fieschi's infernal machine ; 
 Lttempt was nipped in the bud, but the pre- 
 sumption was strong against the partisans of the 
 Comte de Chambord. In short, until within four or 
 months before the butchery in the Rue Le 
 Peletier, neither my uncles nor their friends, not 
 even Joseph Ferrari, who was an Italian by birth 
 and intimately acquainted with the doings of 
 Mazzini, 1 seemed to be certain that the Carbonari 
 were collectively at work in this respect. 
 
 But there was a sudden change of opinion. 
 One day my younger grand-uncle came home 
 "looking very serious, and during dinner told 
 his brother that there had been an attempt to 
 decoy the Emperor. He did not say more that 
 night, and I discovered afterwards that at that 
 moment he knew no more. I specially recollect 
 one thing in connection with this brief statement. 
 I was told not to breathe a word of it to any one. 
 The injunction was absolutely superfluous seeing 
 that I had been taught at a very early age to 
 keep a silent tongue ; moreover, that I had 
 scarcely a companion of my own age to whom 
 
 1 See An Englishman in Paris, vol. II., and My Paris Note- 
 Book, ch. iii.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 19 3 
 
 to talk even if I had felt disposed. The next 
 day more particulars transpired, or to be exact, 
 more rumours found their way to our home, 
 for no one could or would vouch for the truth 
 of what he had heard and repeated. The word 
 " decoyed " as used by my uncle was, however, 
 a misnomer. The Emperor had simply walked 
 into a trap set for him by a woman with his 
 eyes open, for he had been warned that it 
 was a trap. He had been drugged and would 
 have been abducted but for the intervention of 
 another woman. All these stories though vary- 
 ing in detail agreed as to the main fact ; there 
 had been a carefully concocted plot to get hold 
 of the Emperor and to convey him to the 
 frontier, whether to imprison him as a hos- 
 tage or to do away with him eventually was 
 not stated. Not a single word of this, though, 
 found its way into the French press, but the 
 Belgian papers published different versions of 
 the affair in the guise of fairy tales. In spite 
 of the vigilance of the police and the customs, 
 some copies were smuggled into France. The 
 veil which fiction had woven around the original 
 personages was too transparent for the public 
 not to recognise them at once ; nevertheless, 
 people might have looked upon the whole as 
 an ingenious fabrication but for the indiscretion 
 of the Marquis de Boissy, a senator and the 
 jester in ordinary to that august assembly, just 
 
 o
 
 I NDERCI RRENTS 01 
 
 as the late Comte de Douville-Maillefeu was 
 the jester in ordinary to the Chamber oi Deputies 
 under the Hiird Republic. 1 M. de Boissy was 
 always putting questions to the Ministry, and 
 when the rumours just alluded to became rife 
 he insisted upon their being denied or confirmed 
 by the Emperor's ministers. No such denial 
 or confirmation being forthcoming, M. de Boissy 
 exclaimed ; " The Emperor, Messieurs les Sena- 
 t< nrs. is not sufficiently careful in his intercourse 
 with the fair sex. Out of sheer consideration 
 for us, for himself, and for the country, His 
 Majesty ought not to place himself at every 
 moment in the power of this or that adventuress." 
 M. de Boissy was not called "to order" by the 
 chair, and although in those days no reports 
 of the Legislature were allowed to be published 
 the story of the unanswered interpellation and 
 of M. de Boissy 's remark got wind. People 
 not only concluded that the fairy tales of the 
 Belgian papers contained a solid foundation of 
 truth, but that the repeated attacks on the Chief 
 of the State were something- more serious than 
 the individual acts of a Ravaillac or a Louvel. 
 Shortly after that came the affair of the Rue 
 le Peletier. 
 
 I am not speaking without authority when I say 
 that the Emperor in spite of his profound concern 
 
 1 The Marquis de Boissy married the Countess Guiccioli, who 
 played so important a part in the latter years of Byron's life.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 195 
 
 for the innocent victims of that outrage would have 
 felt pleased to see the perpetrators of it escape. 
 He knew that neither their arrest nor execution 
 would influence by a hair's breadth the course the 
 Carbonaria had mapped out in order to force their 
 erstwhile member to fulfil the pledge he had given. 
 And the fulfilment of this pledge meant war with 
 Austria, for no reason affecting the interests of 
 France herself at that moment, with Austria 
 against whom Prussia, in spite of her many years 
 of warlike training, did not dare to draw the sword 
 as yet, with Austria who with France was the 
 protector of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy 
 See. The lesson of the Crimean war had not 
 been lost on Napoleon III. In spite of the glory 
 that had accrued to French arms, the Emperor 
 was aware that the war had not been popular with 
 the majority of the French nation, who strongly 
 suspected the motives that led to it, especially at 
 its conclusion when there was no territorial or 
 other compensation for the great sacrifices they 
 had made. And in the Crimean War the Emperor 
 had had the support of the clergy, which he felt 
 certain would fail in a war for the liberation of 
 Italy ; for not the humblest rural priest fostered 
 the faintest illusion with regard to the final upshot 
 of such liberation as far as Rome was concerned. 
 And although the idea of freeing their Latin 
 brethren from the hated yoke of the Austrian was 
 no doubt attractive to some Frenchmen, the 
 
 o 2
 
 UNDERCURREN rs 01 
 
 prospect of the humiliation oi the Papacy as 
 pictured by the priest throughout the land was 
 
 hateful to nearly all. 
 
 a is why the Emperor felt sore with the 
 police for not having prevented the catastrophe, 
 and not, as has so often been alleged, because oi 
 
 th«' danger to which their neglect had exposed 
 him. Truly, this danger had never appeared so 
 formidable as then ; the erstwhile Carbonaro had 
 fondly imagined that the Carbonaria would stop 
 short at taking his life — that all its former attempts 
 had been intended to force his hand, not to render 
 that hand powerless in death ; and to a certain extent 
 he had logic on his side. Louis Napoleon's death 
 would have dispelled for at least a decade all 
 reasonable chances of a free and united Italy. 
 Mazzini's contention, assumption, or boast — call it 
 what you will — that "Napoleon III.'s death 
 would have been followed by another republic 
 which would have come to the aid of Italy," to 
 which boast Orsini gave utterance at his trial, 
 will not bear a moment's investigation as regards 
 its second postulate. But the truth of the first 
 was patent to everybody and more than patent 
 to Louis Napoleon himself, who, notwithstanding 
 his fatalism and his marvellous escape from the 
 jaws of death, was too logical to court deliberately 
 a second risk of a similar nature. The Prince 
 Imperial was not two years old, and his father 
 knew but too well that the sight of an infant
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE i 97 
 
 king in its cradle, and shown by its mother, was 
 no longer sufficient to keep revolutionary passions 
 in check as it had been two hundred years before, 
 during the Regency of Anne of Austria. If at 
 any period he had been at all sanguine about the 
 results of such an exhibition, the somewhat 
 analogous experiments of the Duchesse de Berri 
 (July 1830) and of the Duchesse d'Orleans 
 (February 1848) were amply calculated to disabuse 
 his mind in this respect, apart from the fact that 
 in spite of his great love for his wife, he was not 
 quite prepared to credit her with the heroism that 
 beards a revolution. The Emperor, therefore, 
 knew that the first and foremost condition of his 
 son's succession to the throne was the prolongation 
 of his own life. Four and twenty hours after the 
 bloodshed in the Rue Le Peletier, he had been 
 categorically told that his life depended on the 
 following steps on his part 1 : 1st. The Pardon of 
 
 1 I have heard it stated over and over again that on the morning 
 after the affair in the Rue Le Peletier the Emperor sent for an old 
 friend of his mother, a Roman exile who had been living in Paris 
 for many years and who had been implicated forty-three years 
 before in the conspiracy against the Holy See. Queen Hortensc had 
 told her son that if ever he was in trouble to apply to this friend. 
 Though close upon seventy at that time, he was in direct com- 
 munication with the Carbonaria and had not left off conspiring. 
 It was he who imposed the three conditions mentioned above, and 
 a few days later announced to the Emperor that fifteen months 
 respite would be granted for the other two. Personally I am under 
 the impression that this intermediary between the Emperor and 
 the Carbonaria was the lawyer Domassi, the same who, in 1X15, 
 when a prisoner in Rome, was the guest of Monsignor Pacca, the 
 Governor of the Holy City, at whose own table li< ate. 1 feel 
 certain that his name was mentioned several times in my hearing,
 
 UNDERCURRENTS 01 
 
 ni ; 2nd. The Proclamation of the Indepen- 
 dence of Italy; 3rd. The Co-operation of France 
 with Italy in a war against Austria 
 
 rhere was no alternative but acceptance' and 
 even then the Carbonaria made a show ot gene- 
 rosity in relieving Louis Napoleon of one of his 
 pledges, the pardon of Orsini. They were 
 afraid probably that the execution of that first 
 pledge would entail the non-fulfilment of the other 
 two : tor at the first mention of his contemplated 
 clemency, the Emperor was confronted by the 
 whole of the French clergy in the person of 
 Cardinal Morlot, Archbishop of Paris. This 
 prelate told him distinctly that powerful as he 
 was in France " your Majesty is not sufficiently 
 powerful to do this. By God's admirable grace, 
 your Majesty's life has been spared, but a great 
 deal of French blood has been shed, and that 
 blood demands expiation. Without such expia- 
 tion, all idea of justice would be lost. Jtistitia 
 
 norum fundamentum." 
 
 When the words were reported to him at our 
 
 but I have not a single note to confirm my impression. On the 
 other hand, my uncles maintained that the man for whom the 
 Emperor sent was the Comte Arese, the same who had been 
 brought up side by side with Prince Louis and whose father was 
 on most intimate terms with Queen Hortense. Comte Arese 
 is said to have told the Emperor that, in addition to Orsini, forty 
 other Carbonari had been selected to repeat the attempt, if 
 Orsini's should fail. 
 
 1 A few days after the attempt the Prince Regent of Prussia 
 'subsequently Wilhelm I.) wrote to Prince Albert as follows : 
 '• Napoleon's dilemma was summed up in two words : War or the 
 dagger ; not a French dagger, but an Italian one."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 199- 
 
 home — I remember the scene as if it were 
 to-day — Ferrari leaped from his chair, and ex- 
 claimed : " They have come direct from Rome. 
 The priests flatter themselves that the Carbonaria 
 will insist rigorously on the redemption of the 
 whole of the three pledges, and that short of that 
 the society will take the Emperor's life. Well, 
 the priests are mistaken. A human life counts 
 for nothing with the Carbonaria and they will 
 sacrifice Orsini's as being for the moment less 
 valuable than Louis Napoleon's to the cause of 
 Italy's freedom. Remember what I tell you." 
 
 His interlocutors could not help remembering, 
 for his prediction was realised to the very letter. 
 A couple of days later, the Emperor paid a secret 
 visit to Orsini in his prison, and though no one 
 knows till this day what transpired during this 
 interview, Orsini after that became an altered 
 man. He who had opposed a stern and stubborn 
 silence to M. Treilhard's questions made virtually 
 a clean breast of the whole affair. He supplied 
 the most minute particulars of the organising of 
 the plot in London, and it was by the Emperor's 
 special permission that Jules Favre was enabled 
 to point out the lofty sentiments that impelled the 
 deed. Louis Napoleon had virtually accepted 
 the executorship of Orsini's political testament. 1 
 
 1 I had the confirmation of this visit from the lips of the lati 
 Marshal Canrobert, who had the particulars from General Flinty 
 who accompanied the Emperor.
 
 UNDERCI RR1 NTS < • ! 
 
 B) this time the Emperor could have had but 
 few, if any, illusions left with regard to the effici- 
 ency of his police to protect him and his subjects 
 against such outrages as that which had spread 
 consternation throughout the land. The renewal 
 of his compact with the Carbonaria had, how- 
 ever, given him a respite of fifteen months, for 
 he felt confident that under no circumstances 
 would they prove false to their word. And 
 fifteen months to a man of his temperament, who 
 trusted t<> the events of an hour to carry out the 
 plans he hail meditated for years, who had even 
 postponed the Coup d'Etat from week to week, 
 fifteen months to such a man, just escaped from 
 a supreme danger seemed little short of eternity. 
 Fifteen months might be productive of a chapter, 
 nay, of a whole volume, of accidents ; meanwhile 
 lie could breathe freely ; the sword of Damocles 
 that had been suspended over his head since 
 his accession to the throne had oone to the 
 grinder's. 
 
 What, then, was the Emperor's surprise when 
 within the next three months he was informed 
 secretly by one of his chamberlains that another 
 plot against his life was being hatched by the 
 Carbonaria. There could be no doubt about 
 the society's share in the matter, seeing that 
 a portrait of Orsini, very rare at that particular 
 period, served as a token of recognition among 
 the conspirators, several of whom were in Paris.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 201 
 
 Pietri had been succeeded by Boitelle, and the 
 chamberlain's revelations which had been pre- 
 ceded by insinuations virtually took the shape 
 of an indictment against the new Prefect of 
 Police. At first the Emperor had been disin- 
 clined to attach much importance to these 
 communications, although he gave Boitelle a 
 hint of the rumours that were abroad, without 
 divulging, however, his own source of informa- 
 tion. But when the Chamberlain handed 
 the Emperor a portrait of Orsini, said to have 
 been borrowed from one of the conspirators, 
 the Emperor sent for his Prefect and placed 
 the documentary proof before him. The latter 
 was not in the least disconcerted. "If your 
 Majesty will tear off the sheet of paper that 
 covers the back of the portrait, the value of the 
 documentary evidence will strike your Majesty 
 as original." The portrait was signed by Boitelle 
 himself. " In fact," said the Emperor when 
 telling the story ; " Boitelle while dancing on the 
 tight-rope of office is compelled to do as the 
 others do. Though honest to a degree he has 
 to invent tricks to keep his balance, and like 
 the others he has but little time to spare to look 
 around him. That kind of dual observation can 
 only be accomplished successfully by a Fouchc, 
 and even my uncle had only one. Fouchc danced 
 on the tight-rope and every now and again 
 knocked the enemies of the Emperor on the
 
 I NDERCI RR] NTS I 
 
 with his balancing-pole : m\ prefects allow 
 my enemies to get hold of the balancing-pole 
 and with it to drag them easily off their rope. 
 That is the difference between my police and 
 those of Napoleon I." Eighteen months later, 
 and that notwithstanding the apparently satis- 
 factory issue to France of the war in Italy, 
 the Emperor might have- held the same language 
 with regard to the superior officers of his army. 
 
 After all this, there is no need to insist upon 
 the real motive — as distinguished from the 
 alleged one — that led Louis Napoleon to under- 
 take a war against Austria. What is, perhaps, 
 less intelligible is the Emperor's anxiety for 
 his cousin's marriage with the daughter of Victor 
 Emmanuel, notwithstanding the King's scarcely 
 concealed repugnance to sanction such a union. 
 I will endeavour to explain this anxiety directly, 
 though I am by no means confident of success, 
 but I must first quote a note of my grand- 
 uncles, dated January 1859. 
 
 " The King, though brave to a fault, dreads 
 ' scenes ' with his womankind. He had been 
 more or less afraid of Queen Adelaide ; he was 
 afraid of Rosina Vercellana long before he made 
 her Contessa di Mirafiori ; he appears to be more 
 afraid of Princesse Clotilde than he was of the 
 late Queen and is of Contessa Rosina, although 
 the Princess is but sixteen. But she takes life 
 very seriously and has strong religious feelings, in
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 203 
 
 both of which views and feelings she is backed 
 up by her former governess, Signorina Foresta. 
 There being no mother these two are of course 
 much thrown together, and the opposition to 
 the marriage derived considerable and additional 
 force from this constant companionship. Victor 
 Emmanuel was on the horns of a dilemma, but 
 Cavour got him out of it by positively ' bund- 
 ling ' Signorina Foresta out of the palace and 
 ordering her to leave Piedmont within the space of 
 twenty-four hours. Ferrari tells me that Cavour, 
 in spite of his mild and benevolent looks can be 
 very rough and arbitrary. The only one who 
 is not afraid of him is Garibaldi, who on one 
 occasion said that, Prime Minister or not, he 
 would fling him out of the window if he began 
 bullying. " Be this as it may," Ferrari went 
 on, " Prince Napoleon was talking to Victor 
 Emmanuel when the latter was called out of the 
 room and told that Signorina Foresta had been 
 got rid of. A moment or so afterwards the King 
 returned, his face beaming with satisfaction. 
 ' There has been a lot of worry about this 
 marriage of yours,' he said to Plon-Plon, with 
 whom ever since his visit to France in 1855 h< k 
 had been on terms of boon companionship. Plon- 
 Plon nodded his head affirmatively. 'Well, we'll 
 settle the matter at once,' he said, and before 
 Plon-Plon could ask any further questions, he 
 rang the bell and sent for his daughter. A few
 
 
 i mm R< :URR1 NTS i >i- 
 
 minutes later the Princess entered the apartment, 
 and the door had hardly closed upon her when 
 ■ ither pushed her into Plon-Plon's arms. ' I 
 have told you that you arc to marry Napoleon,' 
 he laughed, 'and here he is ; kiss one another and 
 1< t there be an end of the matter.' ' 
 
 That is how Victor Emmanuel got over his 
 scruples or pretended to get over them, for to the 
 end of his life he never forgave himself for that 
 marriage. " I shall be able to account to my 
 Maker for the blood I have spilled for the cause 
 oi Italy's freedom," he said shortly before his 
 death ; " I shall never be able to account for the 
 and the martyrdom I have inflicted upon an 
 innocent woman for this same cause ; and that 
 woman is my daughter." 
 
 The Emperor felt as conscious of the magnitude 
 of the personal sacrifice he was exacting at the 
 hands of Victor Emmanuel and his daughter as they 
 felt themselves ; but he was practically powerless. 
 Cavour and not Napoleon had set his mind on 
 this marriage ; and in spite of everything that 
 has been written and said during the last thirty 
 years, Cavour in the execution of his own designs 
 more unscrupulous and inexorable than 
 Bismarck. To those who have studied the pri- 
 vate character of the crreat Chancellor it becomes 
 exceedingly doubtful whether he would have ever 
 deliberately wrecked a woman's existence in the 
 furtherance of his political plans. The stern-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 205 
 
 looking Teutonic oriant with the fierce moustache, 
 beetling eyebrows, and somewhat gruff voice was 
 and is "all heart" where women, children, and 
 animals are concerned ; the benign-looking, " be- 
 spectacled," pot-bellied Italian who might have 
 sat as a model for the mildest of Dickens's 
 characters appears to have been unaffected by 
 such sentiments. The causes of the difference 
 in that respect between those two great statesmen 
 must be looked for, perhaps, in their earlier lives. 
 The first serious love-affair of Otto von Bismarck 
 made him a happy husband and father ; the first 
 serious love-affair of Camillio Cavour made him 
 a disappointed man. Henceforth, there seems 
 to be no room either in his mind or heart for 
 anything but ambition ; ambition, it is true, of 
 the loftiestkind, but ambition which at the same 
 time shrinks from nothing, not even from murder, 
 to attain its end. It has not been left to posterity 
 to detect the hand of Cavour behind the murder- 
 ous plots of the Carbonaria ; at least two of 
 Cavour's most eminent contemporaries, neither of 
 whom liked Napoleon, spoke out plainly on the 
 subject. Prince Albert, writing to Leopold I. in 
 the beginning of January 1858 on the slippery 
 policy of the Emperor and his confidential rela- 
 tions with Piedmont, said : " I quite agree with 
 you that the dread of assassins is an important 
 factor in all this, and that Cavour docs his utmost 
 to keep this fear alive ; in that way he has his
 
 I NDERCURRENTS < 'I 
 
 roucfhlv in hand, makes it advance when 
 he likes, and applies the whip now and then by 
 celling him that he has discovered one or more 
 n< w plots against his life." I" such a man the 
 misery of a girl of sixteen at being bound to a 
 libertine of the worst description for ever, was 
 absolutely of no consequence whatever. Cavour 
 knew o\ Prince; Napoleon's influence over his 
 cousin, and of his hatred of the French clergy ; he 
 also knew o\ the influence of the French clergy, an 
 instance of which he had just experienced in 
 Cardinal Morlot's opposition to Orsini's pardon ; 
 he was determined that the one influence should 
 counteract the other and he carried the day. 
 
 The barest enumeration of the incidents of the 
 Franco- Austrian campaign is out of the question 
 
 There are at least a hundred books pro- 
 ng to treat these incidents historically; I have 
 read several of these works, I have skimmed a 
 great many more. As far as I can recollect there 
 is not one which has fulfilled its real historical 
 purpose of showing the reader that the disaster of 
 Sedan was foreshadowed in the victory of Ma- 
 genta. It is simply because the historian proper 
 travels from his starting point — Cause — to his 
 goal — Result — in a railway train, which mode of 
 locomotion prevents him from examining the in- 
 tervening ground invariably bestrewn with valu- 
 able personal anecdotes. In one of Disraeli's 
 earlier novels — I do not remember which — there
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 207 
 
 is a father who recommends his son to read bio- 
 graphy and autobiography, by preference the 
 latter, rather than history. I read that novel 
 when I was a mere lad, and have never seen it 
 since, but I promised myself to profit by the 
 advice. I have not neglected history, but have 
 taken it as the English take their melon, after 
 dinner — i.e., after I had my biographical fill of 
 the men and women who played a part in that 
 history. Most people take their history as the 
 French take their melon, viz. before their 
 biographical meal. Accident has, moreover, be- 
 friended me by placing at my disposal a number of 
 notes not available to others, and it is from some 
 of these that the evidence will be forthcoming not 
 only as to the rotten state of the French army 
 during the Franco-Austrian campaign, but of 
 Napoleon's knowledge to that effect at the very 
 beginning of the campaign ; which knowledge 
 went on increasing until the end, when he could 
 but come to one conclusion, namely, that in spite 
 of the glory that had accrued to it, the French 
 army would be as powerless to keep the foreign 
 foe at bay on its own territory as the police had 
 been powerless to protect his life from the attempts 
 of the assassin. Fate and only Fate had stood by 
 Napoleon's side, and to Fate he would have to 
 trust throughout. 
 
 The Emperor left the Tuileries for the seat of 
 war at 5 p.m. on the 10th May, 1859 ; at 7. 30 a.m.
 
 L'NDERCl RREN rS 0] 
 
 on the .jili May, heme, six days and a few hours 
 
 re his departure. Lieutenant de Cadore, one 
 of his Majesty's orderl) officers, handed Marshal 
 Vaillant an autograph letter from his sovereign 
 informing the old soldier that he had ceased to 
 
 Minister of War. A little less than four 
 years before that period the Marshal in a con- 
 fidential gossip with a friend, had confessed his 
 inability either to accomplish or even to initiate 
 the desired reforms in the; army, the necessity 
 of which was painfully patent to him. The 
 Marshal was essentially an honest man, so 
 honest, in fact, as to accuse himself frequently 
 cf dishonesty without the smallest foundation 
 tor such an accusation. The Emperor must 
 have been more or less aware of this incapacity 
 ot which, moreover, Vaillant made no secret; 1 
 
 there was no attempt on His Majesty's part 
 to replace the admittedly incapable by the 
 admittedly capable, for it would be idle to pre- 
 tend that all the captains of the Second Empire 
 who did not come to the front were vainglorious 
 mediocrities. There were men who, though 
 not endowed with genius, were nevertheless ex- 
 
 lingly well-informed and ornaments to their 
 profession ; unfortunately for the Empire, they 
 lacked the qualities that told most with the 
 party of the Empress, viz., the courtier-instinct, 
 and promotion was withheld in consequence. 
 1 An Englishman in Paris, vol. II., ch. viii.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 209 
 
 General (afterwards Marshal) Niel was neither 
 a Moltke, nor anything like a Moltke, but as an 
 organiser he was probably superior to most of 
 the then prominent men. His subsequent failure to 
 reorganise the French army was due first of all 
 to his early death ; secondly, to the opposition he 
 encountered on all sides during the short spell 
 he had his hand on the helm. And there were 
 many men as able as he who were not even 
 vouchsafed this little chance. 
 
 Lest this should appear an unfounded charge 
 against the Empress and her party, I hasten to 
 give proof of what I advance. Coupled with 
 the news of the victory of Solferino came the 
 particulars of Niel's magnificent share in the 
 events of that day and the semi-official announce- 
 ment of his elevation to the rank of marshal. 
 Tidings of that promotion seemed almost the 
 only drop of bitter in the overflowing cup of 
 sweet. " Can you account for this infatuation 
 (engouement) of the Emperor for Niel?" she 
 asked her interlocutor. "It is very easily ac- 
 counted for, Madame," was the reply; "General 
 Niel is highly gifted ; he speaks on most subjects 
 not only with ease but with knowledge ; he is a 
 living encyclopedia; he is, moreover, a man <>| 
 solid parts as far as education goes. The 
 Emperor, being surrounded by men whose ability 
 is as often denied as affirmed {contcstt'c el couslalcc), 
 no longer applies to them when in need ol in- 
 
 i'
 
 RENTS 01 
 
 Ipplies il without a moment's 
 •• rhank you for the others, for the 
 have just draw n of them ; " remarked 
 ml dropped the subject. 
 I repeat, there were many men like Niel in the 
 army. Why did not the Emperor replace 
 hal Vaillant by one of them long before 
 Why. having waited so long, did he dis- 
 i abruptly at the twelfth hour? The 
 nth ha<l gone by, for a great part of the 
 already in Italy, 
 irst question must remain unanswered 
 until I treat of society at the Tuileries and at 
 The: second I will answer at once. 
 illant was deprived of his portfolio at a 
 moment's notice because he had become imbued 
 with the idea that an incapable Minister for War, 
 :eting the emoluments attached to his office, 
 ;. to atone for his incapacity by saving the 
 money-, u| the State. He had positively sent 
 : the divisions belonging to Canrobert's 
 -namely those of Bourbaki, 
 Lult, and Trochu — across the Alps with in- 
 sufficient clothings without stores of any kind, 
 without cartridges, and almost without guns. 
 the Emperor," said Bourbaki to the 
 by Napoleon III. to take a pre- 
 liminary view of the situation; "pray ask the 
 Emperor whether his Minister for War is a 
 traitor or whether he has fallen into a state of
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 211 
 
 idiocy?" "A French army has made its way 
 into Italy before now without shoes to their feet 
 and without shirts to their backs ; but the sight 
 of a French army going to confront the enemy 
 without cannon and without cartridges i s an 
 unprecedented sight " ; concluded Trochu when 
 making his report to the same envoy. 
 
 This was before a blow had been struck, before 
 a shot had been fired. On the 1st June (three 
 days before Magenta) the Emperor was within an 
 ace of being taken prisoner by the Austrians at a 
 distance of about a hundred yards from the French 
 outposts, which outposts themselves were not 
 three hundred yards away from the encampment 
 of Failly's division. This narrow escape did not 
 occur during an engagement, but while his 
 Majesty was peacefully trundling in a shandredan 
 on a country road — I believe from Bicocca to 
 Vespolata. At the battle of Magenta MacMahon 
 himself fell among a detachment of Austrian sharp 
 shooters, who luckily for him mistook him for one 
 of their generals. 
 
 Is it wonderful then that the Emperor's illusions 
 with regard to his army were gone ? Is it won 
 derful that being the fatalist he was, he rushed 
 madly into the war of 1870, trusting to his star 
 and to his star only ? For that such was the 
 I shall have no difficulty in proving 1>\ and by. 
 
 r 2
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Tin R] is one fact connected with the Second 
 Empire which the nobodies who have lorded it 
 over France since the Empire's fall have not been 
 able to explain away. I allude to the unpre- 
 nted prosperity the country enjoyed during 
 ighteen years. All their attempted ex- 
 planations to that effect are lame and more than 
 lame ; they cannot even limp along ; they are 
 »itively paralysed by subsequent facts. The 
 impartial observer, whether he be a Frenchman 
 or a foreigner, who happens to have lived in 
 France under the rdgime of Napoleon III. and 
 under that of the Third Republic cannot help 
 t that during the first-named period 
 the peasant, and for that matter the townsman too, 
 had hih "fowl in the pot " ; a condition of things 
 which was considered by Henri IV. — not a bad 
 vent in those days — the height of a 
 -.•:-.' welfare. 
 The answers to such a remark come glibly
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF THE SECOND EMPIRE 213 
 
 enough, and in many instances they are partly 
 epigrammatic, partly philosophical. " Before the 
 War of Secession in America," replied a pseudo- 
 Republican to me, " the slaves on the southern 
 plantations were better fed and cared for materially 
 than many of the free-born citizens." I was not 
 in a position to contradict him, for I know little or 
 nothing about America, and although I had a 
 notion that he knew as little, I was angel enough 
 not to tread where he had rushed. Nor do I 
 know whether the erstwhile slaves are better off 
 to-day than they were before their emancipation. 
 This much I do know : the political bondsman of 
 the Second Empire regrets the " fowl in the pot," 
 and is by no means consoled for its absence by 
 the thought that the bird has taken flight on the 
 wings of political rhetoric. 
 
 " That ' fowl in the pot' on which you lay so 
 much stress," retorted another Republican, "was 
 simply the ' goose with the golden eggs ' ; the: 
 nation was eating both her interest and her 
 capital." That, I maintain, is an absolute false- 
 hood. It could be proved over and over again, il 
 it were necessary, that the war expenses and the 
 war tax of five milliards of francs wen- paid out 
 of the savings of the population during the 
 previous fifteen or sixteen years, that scarcely an 
 acre of ground was either mortgaged or sold 
 during the two or three years after tin- Treat) "l 
 Frankfort by those who invested their money in
 
 ■I RCURR1 NTS "I 
 
 |\ i ., [dm i >uch proofs would lead 
 
 ir astraj . I ma) mention, however, that 
 
 of the smaller provincial centres these 
 
 almost entirely subscribed in what 
 
 I to be newly minted gold and newly 
 
 d banknotes, both of which tenders, though, 
 
 turned out <>n closer examination to have been 
 
 minted and issued six, seven, eight, and twelve 
 
 years bef The money had simply been lying 
 
 idle during the whole of that time in the linen 
 
 of the peasantry and the petite bourgeoisie 
 
 lance with a system that has prevailed in 
 
 France ever since the peasantry and petite 
 
 reoisie had anything to save, a system 
 
 which will not be entirely abandoned within the 
 
 next century, if then. If further proofs were 
 
 wanted of the unexampled prosperity of France 
 
 between [855 70, they would be found in a 
 
 comparison of the reports of the Poor Law 
 
 ' 1 . / istance Publique) during the Citizen 
 
 Monarchy and the Third Republic with those ot 
 
 - <<\m\ Empire. A judicious critic of the 
 
 >nd Empire has truly said, " Si Napoleon III. 
 
 ne lut ; Napoleon de la Gloire, il fut au 
 
 moins le Napoleon du louis d'or." 1 
 
 It would be sheer folly to pretend that there 
 
 1 The louis d'or existed long before Napoleon III.'s time. In 
 
 •mer days it represented twenty-four francs ; under the present 
 
 -tern twenty francs. But few, except the wealthier 
 
 isses, ever spoke of it as a unit. The lower classes and the bonr- 
 
 \ a piece of twenty francs, and treated it as it were
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 215 
 
 was no poverty in France during the Second 
 Empire. But from various causes the attitude of 
 " Fortune's favourites " towards the indigent was 
 different from what it is to-day. The self-suffi- 
 cient, pompous, quasi-virtuous big-wig of the 
 Third Republic flatters himself that he owes his 
 position to talents, energy, and perseverance. 
 Though he can be lavish at times, he is rarely 
 generous ; he contents himself with being just — 
 according to his own lights. In the majority of 
 cases he has never had the handling of large 
 sums of money until he wheedled himself or 
 was pitchforked into parliament, diplomacy, or 
 office, and what is worse for the poor, he knows 
 his position to be insecure, and that, therefore, he 
 must make hay while the sun shines. A change 
 of ministry may at any moment relegate him to 
 a very chilly corner, and a change of ministry 
 is the only certainty that can enter into his 
 calculations. 
 
 It is doubtful if the big- wig of the Second 
 Empire ever entertained these fears of relapsing 
 into obscurity and straitened means. Whether 
 talented or not, he was less impressed with his 
 own "high and mightiness" than the Republican. 
 Those whom I have known were almost inclined 
 to laugh in their sleeves at the idea of a 
 
 with a kind of reverence. It is only during the Second Empire 
 that the word became general. The familiar sight oi the coin in 
 
 almost everyone's pocket reduced its prestige in the vocabulary 
 
 of the nation.
 
 I M'l RCURR1 NTS "i 
 
 itial mission on the pari of Queen 
 
 :. let alone at their own share in 
 
 a mission. Not a few grinned behind the 
 
 ■ f the worshippers at the Napoleonic 
 
 shrine but until a short time before the collapse 
 
 all had great faith in the cleverness of the high 
 
 priest, and above all in his •• star." And inasmuch 
 
 as he, the high priest, convinced that his "'star" 
 
 would never fail him. gave freely, without stint. 
 
 almost too lavishly, and certainly too indiscrimin- 
 
 the majority of his Court followed suit in 
 
 this : as in every other. 1 
 
 And in spite of the Republicans' frequent 
 
 lions to this effect, Louis Napoleon's charity 
 
 ■/ the result of political and dynastic 
 
 1 After the fall of the Empire, thousands of begging letters were 
 
 at the Tuileries, nearly all of which were annotated in the 
 
 : the Emperor himself, mentioning the sums that had 
 
 ent in reply. He spent on an average ,£140,000 per annum in 
 
 thus ,£2,500,000 during the eighteen years of his reign. 
 
 When we consider that this same man left an income of less than 
 
 ,£5,000 to his widow, the reader will agree that the words lavish and 
 
 riminatc are not misplaced. We are not concerned here 
 
 with the private fortune of the Empress, for although it is true that 
 
 she pledged her jewels in the beginning of September, 1870, in 
 
 nd, in order to face the immediate expenses for herself and 
 
 if followers, it is by no means certain that necessity 
 
 With regard to the late Emperor's invincible 
 
 in his "star," here is another proof. By his will, drawn up 
 
 while he was still on the throne, everything was left to the Empress 
 
 • provision having been made for the son whom 
 
 ep-si at< d, almost idolatrous affection. It was 
 
 >n III. felt confident that his " star " would prolong 
 
 ntil he had seen that son firmly established as his suc- 
 
 •he throne. In that case there would have been no
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 217 
 
 calculation. It proceeded from the wish to enjoy 
 life himself and to make every one around him 
 enjoy it ; for he was essentially the bon-vivant in 
 the widest and most beneficent acceptation of 
 the term ; the bon-vivant whom Marivaux had in 
 his mind's eye when he said, " Pour etre assez 
 bon, il faut l'etre trop." His charming ways, his 
 amiability in all things, his disinterested generosity, 
 his appreciation of humour, even when it was 
 directed against himself, have never been surpassed 
 by any monarch ; and as a consequence, perhaps, no 
 monarch — Charles II. included — has contributed 
 more to his own downfall than he. One instance 
 of this amiability which under the circumstances 
 might well be called culpable neglect to check- 
 mate his enemies in time, must suffice here. On 
 the 3rd November, 1863, Thiers and many other 
 avowed opponents of the Empire resumed their 
 seats at the Palais Bourbon. Morny, in his 
 opening speech as President of the Chamber, 
 alluded in graceful terms to the reappearance 
 of some of his former parliamentary colleagues. 
 " I rejoice to see them once more;, and have no 
 doubt about the loyalty of their intentions," he 
 said. 1 The next morning Morny paid a visit to 
 
 necessity to provide for him, and it would have been but righl that 
 the Empress should enjoy the revenues. But for thai will the 
 Prince Imperial might be alive and on the throne of In. In In 1, foi 
 he would certainly not have gone to Zululand. 
 
 1 In 1857 the number of those opponents was live; in 1 
 had increased to twenty-three.
 
 (JND1 RCURREN I - 01 
 
 nperor, who complimented him on his 
 ■• Nevertheless," added Napoleon with 
 mIc. '* it strikes me that your reference to 
 the election of M. Thiers was a little — well, 
 a little too intense. You arc reported to have 
 said, 'As for myself, I rejoice,' etc., etc. Docs 
 not '; convey a little too much?" 
 
 Mornypointed out that he had referred to former 
 colleagues with whom he had then been on the 
 of terms, and s<> forth. " Yes, yes," retorted 
 the Emperor gaily ; " I had better make up my 
 mind to it, I am surrounded by enemies. There 
 is no doubt about it, you are an Orleanist ; 
 idedly, you are an Orleanist." 
 The note relating this incident is couched in 
 somewhat critical terms, an unusual tone for my 
 grand-uncles to adopt. 1 It goes on as follows : 
 " I do not like the way things are drifting at the 
 Chateau (Tuileries). Every one there seems to 
 be mast' pt the master himself. Politics are 
 
 discussed in the interval between two dances by 
 men and. women who have no more idea of such 
 matters than our cook has of anatomy, dissecting, 
 and operating. I dare say our cook would in- 
 dignantly refute such a charge of ignorance by 
 triumphantly pointing to the fowl she has trussed 
 or the joint she- has trimmed, and it would be vain 
 on my part, I suppose, to make her understand 
 
 1 It appears to have been written several months after the 
 incident.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 219 
 
 the difference between operating upon a live body 
 and a dead one. And the Empire, though by no 
 means a healthy body, is very much alive. A few- 
 months ago I read a book on The French Rev- 
 olution, by an Englishman, 1 and one passage 
 struck me as particularly pertinent to the present 
 state of affairs. ' Meanwhile it is singular how 
 long the rotten will hold together, provided you 
 do not handle it roughly.' I am afraid those 
 twenty-three newly-elected deputies, five of whom 
 have sat in the Chamber for the last six years, are 
 going to handle the Empire roughly, and the 
 mistake of the Emperor lies in his having given 
 them a chance. He ought to have prevented 
 their return by hook or by crook. The man who 
 made a clean sweep of at least ten times their 
 number twelve years ago ought not to have 
 afforded any of them an opportunity now of 
 making a clean sweep of him, for that, assuredly, 
 is what they will endeavour to do. 
 
 " How long they will have to wait for such an 
 opportunity it would be difficult to determine, but 
 when that opportunity comes they will be ready 
 for it. In fairness to them it should be said that 
 they do not disguise their intentions; the noise 
 they make in preparing their brooms — by stamp- 
 ing the handles on the ground in the orthodox 
 fashion — is loud enough to awaken any one who 
 is not wilfully deaf; but they are either that at 
 
 1 Carlyle's.
 
 
 { \|>| R( I RREN fS OF 
 
 .. or else their om n buffooning prevents 
 them from hearing as well as seeing what Is going 
 
 round them. From what I gather it is not 
 
 to decide whether the latest travesties <>l 
 
 Meilhac and IlaK'vy and Offenbach arc the pure 
 
 ime of these gentlemen's imaginations, or 
 simply a faithful picture of some oi the scenes 
 enacted now and then at the Chateau — unless the 
 scenes at the Chateau are a deliberate attempt to 
 imitate, nay, to surpass, Mdlle. Schneider, Leonce, 
 and their fellow artists. The gods, demi-gods, 
 and heroines of Homer, as portrayed by 
 the authors of Orpke'e aux Enfers and La 
 /A.V/.v. and set in motion by that truly 
 magic music of Maitre Jacques, are assuredly not 
 more astounding to the unsophisticated, and for 
 that matter to the sophisticated, than a great many 
 of the warriors, clericals, grandes dames and grands 
 
 neurs constituting the innermost circle at 
 the Court. What after all is the high priest 
 Calchas to that astonishing Abbe Bauer, the latest 
 tad, I am told, in the way of ascetic, but at the 
 same- time, elegant Christianity. He is a convert, 
 
 ras educated for the Jewish ministry, and if 
 everything people state be true, Judaism is well 
 
 »1 him. It appears that a little while ago the 
 
 il.be trie] to convert Adolphc Cremieux, for 
 
 ( remieux, though baptized when quite an infant, 
 
 tinctly a Jew and not a Catholic; a Jew, 
 
 •'• of whom Judaism throughout the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 221 
 
 world may well feel proud. 1 Of course the con- 
 version of such a man as Cremieux, if at all feasible, 
 could not be accomplished by an Abbe Bauer who 
 was more than roughly handled in the encounter. 
 Bauer, however, in spite of his quasi-refined ex- 
 terior, is a vulgarian to his fingers' ends, and thick- 
 skinned besides. Cremieux's hard hitting did not 
 make him wince, and at the end of the interview 
 he said, ' I am very much surprised at your views 
 about the founder of our religion, for I really 
 believe that you are so liberal a Jew as to have 
 legally defended Christ if you had lived in His 
 time.' ' That I certainly should have done,' 
 replied Cremieux, ' and, what is more, I should 
 have got Him acquitted — unless — unless I had 
 been obliged to put the like of you in the 
 witness-box for the defence.' More scathing than 
 even this is Monseigneur Dupanloup's criticism 
 on Abbe Bauer's first sermon before the Court. 
 The preacher, in spite of the warnings of his 
 superiors, had given too much prominence to the 
 Virgin in his address. ' Place aux dames ,' said 
 the Bishop of Orleans. ' According to Abbe 
 Bauer there is no God, and the Virgin Mary is 
 His mother.' 
 
 " I may be permitted to doubt, though, whether 
 this treatment a Fancicu regime of sacred subjects, 
 or rather the reintroduction of the perfumed, 
 
 1 Adolphc Cremieux, one of the mo 1 eminenl Frem hmen o\ hi 
 times, both as a lawyer and as a political authority.
 
 UNDERCI RR1 NTS 0] 
 
 '. and too worldlyabb6 into Court circles, 
 b\ which the Empress wishes to emphasise her 
 
 ration for Marie-Antoinette, her surroundings 
 
 and legitimac) in general, is calculated to give the 
 
 i a \<t\ exalted opinion of their rulers. 
 
 not wain a John Knox thundering 
 
 ist everything, nor docs one want an Abbe 
 Bauer 'under-studying' the role of a Cardinal de 
 K<>han. Monseigneur I )upanloup notwithstanding 
 the sally just quoted, is a highly gifted, worthy, 
 and absolutely disinterested prelate. He is 
 thoroughly imbued with the dignity of his sacred 
 office, and although very militant at all times, and 
 often abrupt and the reverse of amiable, he would 
 not condescend to enact the buffoon or instruct 
 
 lergy to this effect for no matter how good a 
 cans.. He would not do evil that good might 
 come. But a great many of his fellow-prelates 
 do not possess the same tact and discrimination. 
 
 y fulminate, or allow their clergy to fulminate, 
 
 inst the vices and foibles of the hour in a 
 manner which is apt to breed as much contempt 
 lor the would-be physician as for the patient. 
 Not Ion-- ago a parish priest inveighing against 
 the tan-can, actually held up the two sides of his 
 and performed some steps in the pulpit to 
 show his tlock how the Holy Virgin danced and 
 how they, his flock, should dance. 'This priest 
 
 ledly beats Calchas in La Belle Helene, but 
 there is a warrior at the Court who beats both
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 223 
 
 the cure and the Calchas and the Agamemnon of 
 the opera-bouffe. This is no other than Count 
 Tascher de la Pagerie, who imitates barn-yard 
 fowls, the sun and the moon — by making idiotic 
 grimaces — at the command of his Imperial mis- 
 tress, and who is ' trotted out ' on all occasions for 
 the amusement of visitors. Count Tascher does 
 not think it incompatible with his rank in the army, 
 his relationship to the Emperor, and his position 
 of chamberlain to the Empress to oblige in that 
 way. He is prouder of these accomplishments 
 than of his birth, the brave deeds of his father, 
 and of everything else besides. After that people 
 need not wonder at Gustave Dore's performing 
 somersaults and standing on his head for his own 
 amusement, and at his announced intention of 
 abandoning his own career, in which he has already 
 won much fame, for that of Auriol, the clown. 
 
 "And it is more than probable that in the 
 intervals of his clowning, this same Count Tascher 
 pretends to lend a hand in the steering of the 
 ' Ship of State,' for the Tuileries is fast becoming 
 a ' cour du roi Petaud et chacun y parle hunt.' ' 
 
 "The worst of it is that those whose very 
 existence as a body depends upon their unqucs- 
 
 1 In olden times the mendicants, in imitation <>f the guilds, 
 corporations, and communities in France, annually elected :i king, 
 who took the title of King P&aud, from the Latin peto. In 
 Tartufte, Orgon's mother compares hi 1 i 1 "- ' ourl 
 
 of King Petaud. "On n'y respecte ricn, chacun y parle haul 
 says.
 
 IERCURRENTS O] 
 
 and abstention from comment 
 
 until such comment is in\ ited are becoming infected 
 
 prevailing mania for laying down the law 
 
 conceivable subject. When I saj 
 
 infected ' I put it mildly ; in realit) 
 
 xample — I mean the army. 1 
 
 n enough of soldiering to know the in 
 
 estimable value ^( silent obedience to the orders 
 
 of one's superiors. The order may he wrong, and 
 
 tantamount to a death sentence to its recipient; 
 
 und to carry it out to the letter. And yet, 
 
 \sith imples of Lords Lucan and Cardigan 
 
 .-. Balaclava before them, French officers will go 
 
 on discussing orders not only from a military point 
 
 ( >f view, but from a political. 
 
 1 Ine instance in point will suffice. The de- 
 linquent is gone, and peace be to his ashes ! for he 
 and honourable soldier. But his well- 
 known bravery and uprightness, and above all his 
 position near the Emperor as aide-de-camp \ called 
 for more circumspection on General de Cotte's 
 part than he exercised on the occasion alluded 
 1 he thing happened a few evenings before 
 departure for the Franco-Austrian 
 War. < e ;< ral d< < !otte was on duty at the time, 
 and after dinner went down to the smoking-room 
 part for the military and civil household. ' The 
 thing aid aloud, lighting a cigarette ; 
 
 ' in a day or two we shall be on our way to Italy, 
 unless Providence or the Lunacy Commissioners
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 225 
 
 stop us at the first stage, at Charenton.' 1 Half- 
 an hour later the General went up stairs to the 
 Empress's drawing-room. He had scarcely en- 
 tered the apartment when the Emperor came up to 
 him with a smile. 'My dear General,' he re- 
 marked quietly, ' I have too much respect for the 
 opinion of others, even when they are diametri- 
 cally opposed to mine, to ask people to fight 
 battles the motives for which they do not ap- 
 prove. You will remain in Paris with the Em- 
 press.' 
 
 " That did not suit the General's book at all ; 
 but he did not utter a word in defence, he only 
 bowed. He was, in fact, too astonished at his 
 comment having reached the ears of the Em- 
 peror so soon. As far as he was aware, no ser- 
 vant had entered the room while he was there. 
 He was, then, reluctantly compelled to conclude 
 that an equal had played the part of tell-tale ; and 
 that alone would convey a fair idea of the code of 
 honour that prevails among the immediate en- 
 tourage of the sovereigns. Nevertheless lie was 
 not going to be left out of the fighting, there 
 fore on the 14th of May he simply had his horses 
 
 1 Charenton is the well-known madhouse just outsi<l< Pari . At 
 the news of the declaration of war in 1.S70 Prince Napoleon made 
 a similar remark. lie was on his way to Norwaj with I me 
 Kenan. "Reverse your engines," he said to the mastei of ili<- 
 yacht; "we arc K°' n K hack." "Where to, Mnn was 
 
 the question. '"' To Charenton." The replj was quoted ass 
 
 thing spitefully witty and original. It wa , piti ful bl 
 
 ( 1
 
 ,.l NTS OF 
 
 taken to the Imperial train, selected 
 
 it in an empty compartment, and only showed 
 
 Marseill< The Emperor merely 
 
 tnd held out his hand. This is a sample 
 
 of the Emperor's amiability, of his willingness 
 
 ones be bygones." 
 
 My notes contain a hundred similar anecdotes, 
 
 all tending to show that the Emperor was too 
 
 natured ; and I shall have no difficulty in 
 
 when the time comes, that this excessive 
 
 v finally caused his ruin. 
 
 As yet, however, the cloud on the horizon is 
 
 rer than a hand, and certainly not visible 
 
 to the naked eye. And France is too busy enjoy- 
 
 self to scan the sky with a spyglass. She 
 
 ■ even enact the fable of the hare with the 
 
 pe ; she remains profoundly ignorant ot the 
 
 approach of her enemy. France resounds with 
 
 laughter, and above it all rings that modern version 
 
 Rabelais' " Fay ce que vouldras," viz. the 
 
 chorus of Theresa's song, " Rien n'est sacre pour 
 
 un sapeur," which chorus paints the moral 
 
 atmosphere in one line. 
 
 F< r the Lpper stood not alone in his irreverence 
 
 for any and every thing. He simply took his 
 
 from those above him, from educated and 
 
 iter] men who deliberately mocked at "the 
 
 le world and his wife," including the sovereign 
 
 and his consort, the former of whom they not 
 
 only slighted in his private capacity, but as the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 227 
 
 chief of the State. 1 Rochefort, at a later period, 
 had at any rate the courage to attack openly ; the 
 partisans of the d' Orleans regime lacked that 
 courage. They sailed as close to the wind as they 
 dared without risking penalties. Strange to say 
 though, the worst blows to the Emperor's dignity 
 came from the Emperor's friends and proteges, 
 and were dealt in fun — " histoire de s'amuser et 
 d'amuser les autres." They came in the shape of 
 practical jokes at which Society roared and the 
 victim himself, who was rarely seen to smile, 
 laughed outright. 
 
 On the face of it, the jokes perpetrated by 
 *' Napoleon III.'s double," as Eugene Vivier was 
 called, may appear trivial. But the startling 
 likeness of the famous cornet-player to the 
 Emperor which made those jokes possible had 
 its influence nevertheless on the Emperor per- 
 sonally, and gave rise to the most absurd stories 
 during the heyday of the Empire, and above all at 
 its fall ; all of which stories only tended to diminish 
 the Emperor's prestige. People were too apt to 
 remember Louis Napoleon's erratic habits before 
 his accession to the Imperial throne, and albeit 
 that, as we have seen already, those habits did 
 not entirely cease until the end of his reign, the) 
 were both consciously and unconscious!) 1 
 
 1 I remember the Journal de Paris devoting one pai raphtothe 
 speech of the Emperor at the opening <>f the Chambers Th( 
 
 paragraph was inserted in the column headed " I ail I I 
 (Anglia 1 , "General News").
 
 \ \i>ri<< i RREN is OF 
 
 ' . and foes, mainly through the 
 
 anity — or worse, of Vivier — who 
 
 i in impersonating the sovereign in 
 
 i and in all sorts ct company, 
 r not as the rase might be. 
 • p ringing again with another exploit of 
 
 says my note. " This time he has ini- 
 tiated the Emperor at a supper at Mme. 
 ind to such good purpose that several 
 of h ts who frequently see and talk to his 
 
 completely taken in. It would 
 ir that about a week ago the Emperor and 
 at the Italian opera, where 
 Mm-. d< Paiva's box faces that of their Majesties, 
 and that the glare of the footlights hurt her 
 There was no screen in the 
 Imperial box, and the Empress had only her fan 
 to keep off the heat. 1 The Emperor remarked 
 quite casually on the inconvenience to one of his 
 camp, saying, ' Mme. de Paiva is better 
 than \\<- .ire ; look, what a beautiful Japanese 
 The aide-de-camp in question 
 happened to 1"- on friendly terms with Mme. de 
 aid paid her a visit between the acts. 
 isually as the Emperor, he remarked 
 f the screen, adding that the 
 Emperor would he pleased to have a similar one 
 Empri Thereupon Mme. de Paiva 
 
 imall in those clays ; the large ones date from 
 much later.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 229 
 
 unfastens the screen in question, hands it to her 
 visitor, and bids him offer it to the Emperor with 
 her respectful compliments for the use of the 
 Empress. The aide-de-camp, though considerably 
 embarrassed, dare not refuse the offer, and makes 
 his way to the Imperial box with the screen, which 
 he quietly adjusts in front of the Empress, who, 
 however, sweeps it contemptuously out of her 
 way. The Empress has not got her temper under 
 sufficient control, and often allows it to get the 
 better of her in public ; under such circumstances 
 the Emperor invariably pours oil upon the troubled 
 waters, and he did so in this instance. He picked 
 up the screen, and with a smile placed it in front 
 of himself; and inasmuch as Mme. de Pa'iva had 
 narrowly watched the scene from the other side of 
 the house, he considered himself bound to go and 
 thank her personally the next day or the clay after. 
 For that part of the story I will, however, not 
 vouch. I am under the impression that it is a 
 pure fabrication, whether of Mme. de Paiva herself 
 or of some of her familiars I am unable to say. 
 Both are equally inventive, and the rumour was 
 evidently set afloat in order to find a basis for the 
 next scene in which Vivier was to play his part. 
 For even if one admits that the Emperor paid 
 the alleged visit, his Majesty would certainl) not 
 have followed it up by inviting himself or accept 
 ing an invitation to a supper at M me. de Paiva s 
 at any rate not to a supper in compan) with 1
 
 ■I R< I RREN IS ( M 
 
 : .. not one ol whom is particu 
 ned for the art of holding his tongue. 
 •• Be this as it may, the supper w ith the carefully 
 1 ' entrance of Vivier, took place and has 
 furnished fresh gossip for at least a week. Prac- 
 ly, the Emperor is powerless to prevent these 
 things : he can neither send Vivier into exile nor 
 condemn him to wear a mask, but there was no 
 invite Vivier to the Tuileries and to 
 have the performance repeated for the delectation 
 l11 and sundry as the Emperor has done. 
 
 fact is, Vivier is persona grata with 
 
 Louis Napoleon for a far different reason than 
 
 suspect. To begin with, Vivier is a 
 
 I i< an ; secondly, many years ago Vivier gave 
 
 ilicited testimony of Louis Napoleon's legiti- 
 
 . . which has been so often called into question, 
 
 and on the subject of which the Emperor is so ex- 
 
 lingly sensitive. It happened in 1844, while 
 
 Vivier was giving some performances in London. 
 
 met a countryman of his named 
 
 aldi, who told him that Prince Louis was 
 
 in London, and that he (Vivier) ought to pay his 
 
 to him. ' Come to the French Theatre 
 
 to-night and I will present you,' said Ceccaldi. 
 
 At that time Vivier had never set eyes on the 
 
 Prince, hut the moment he entered the Theatre 
 
 he pointed him out to his companion. ' How do 
 
 know?' asked Ceccaldi; 'you have never 
 
 him before?' 'No,' was the reply, 'but
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 231 
 
 I recognised him at once by the likeness to his 
 father, to whom I was presented at Pisa.' Then 
 there is the truly startling likeness between the 
 Emperor and Vivier himself. Although it has 
 already led to much mischief, and may lead to 
 farther mischief, 1 the Emperor, with his ' big 
 heart,' his somewhat too-active imagination, and 
 his fatalism, is almost convinced that Vivier's 
 existence is more or less bound up with his own. 
 
 " Thus we have the Jester in Ordinary to the 
 Court, i.e. Count Tascher ; the Jester who 
 performs ' by command,' namely Eugene Vivier ; 
 and we have also the corps de ballet and the 
 corps dramatique, for now and again there arc 
 choregraphic and other entertainments, generally 
 arranged by the Princesse von Metternich, who 
 enjoys herself at the Tuileries as she probably 
 would not be allowed to enjoy herself at the 
 Hofburg. The daughter of the famous Count 
 Szandor who, by the by, was as mad as a March 
 hare does not think it incumbent on herself 
 to observe the same strict rules of etiquette 
 towards the grandson of a Corsican lawyer 
 and his wife as she would be bound to 
 
 1 I feel convinced that there was no prophetic intent to the word 
 I have underlined in the above note. Nevertheless, after the fall 
 of Sedan there were hundreds of people in Fram e, and above .ill in 
 Paris, who said that the Emperor was not at Wilh il all, 
 
 that Vivier had been sent for in hot haste and had taken his plat e. 
 Absurd as was the story, it was encouraged bj the Republicans 
 who saw in it a means of still further damaging the 1 mp 
 prestige.
 
 
 UND1 i;< l RRENTS < 'I 
 
 I [apsburg and his spouse, 
 
 I ». ; . Ponts- Birkenfeld. 
 
 • : iemblance to the ordinary 
 
 the noble and aristocratic 
 
 is quarrel among themselves just like 
 
 •. born of concierges and cabmen, 
 
 and uouM come to Mews now and then like the 
 
 n dancers, but for the timely 
 
 lion of the Empress. 1 
 
 • 1 * it a wonder then that the Paivas, the 
 
 Skittl<-s. th< Pearls, and the rest shrug their 
 
 rs and smile, nay, laugh outright, at the 
 
 ■ those grandes dames de par 
 
 1 doubt whether many of those d<!- 
 
 be very witty; nevertheless, they are 
 
 ited now and then with saying things which 
 
 worthy of Ninon de l'Enclos or Rochefou- 
 
 d — although I strongly suspect that some of 
 
 clever literary men and journalists among 
 
 • familiars are mainly responsible for the 
 
 igrammatic form of these remarks. This is 
 
 other instance of 'Nemesis at work 
 
 •..' for if in the beginning of the Empire the 
 
 illusion to a story, well known at the time, of a 
 
 Princesse von Metternich and Mine, de Persigny 
 
 on th< •aer's dress in one of the entertainments. 
 
 . the Empress to the Princesse, who 
 
 ■ Let her do as she likes ; you know that her 
 
 iad." " If that is a justification for letting 
 
 am sure I shall not admit it," replied the 
 
 downright mad." And the grand- 
 
 I "■• had to give in, and the Empress too. 
 
 ;-c story all round with great glee.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 233 
 
 papers had been allowed a certain latitude in their 
 comments upon matters political, the writers would 
 not have been obliged to make themselves the 
 assiduous chroniclers of the fails et gcstcs of the 
 least creditable section of society, in order to live. 
 As it is, these records have become a permanent 
 feature and will probably not disappear, however 
 much the stringent rules with regard to political 
 comment be relaxed in the future. At present 
 there appears to be a tendency in the other direc- 
 tion, and the Emperor — who I feel persuaded is 
 liberally inclined — does not know which course to 
 adopt in consequence of the multiplicity of his 
 counsellors, not two of whom appear to be agreed 
 as to the degree of liberty to be granted, and all 
 of whom — not to mince words — are making fools 
 of themselves." l 
 
 "Of course, the Cora Pearls, the Skittles, the 
 Pai'vas, and the rest are only too delighted at all 
 this, and, confident of the support of their friends 
 the journalists, have entered into open rivalry with 
 
 1 Strong as the latter words may seem, they do not exaggi 
 M. Charles Boissiere, a well-known literary man and a member "I 
 
 the Philotcchnic Society, having applied for leave to hold < 
 
 ■on dramatic literature, the leave was granted by the Departmenl 
 
 of Arts at the Ministry of Public Education on the expr< 
 
 dition that the name of Victor Hugo should nol be mentioned. 
 
 This same Department of Arts offered later on to bu 
 
 picture "A Premiere at the Oddon," on condition thai the artisl 
 
 should paint out the name of Rochefort. Ban iles <>l 
 
 Tiberius" was skyed at the Luxembourg; Eugen Del 
 
 " Liberte guidant le peuple sur les barricades wa cul oul <>f its 
 
 frame, rolled up, and relegated to one of the attii
 
 
 I MM RCURREN rs OP 
 
 iiii. of course, on the only 
 such rivalry was possible, namely, 
 unps, the Bois de Boulogne, the Champs- 
 , and the theatres. Mdme.de Paiva's boxes 
 .it the Opera and at the Italiens are more luxuri- 
 . appointed than those ol the Emperor and 
 Empress, her diamonds are more costly than the 
 latter's ; Skittles' pony chaise, with its pair of 
 bs,and its two grooms on coal-black cattle 
 nd, beats anything and everything from the 
 Imperial stables; Cora Pearl's turn-out throws 
 everything into the shade except Skittles', the two 
 latter cut a better figure on horseback than either 
 l : i de Pourtales, Mdme. de Gallifet, 
 Mdn ' ontades, or Mdme. de Persigny ; they 
 
 only two equals in that respect — the Em- 
 and Mdme.de Metternich. Their carriage- 
 5, hacks, and hunters look better, are better 
 and broken in than the best elsewhere, and 
 • fear comparison with those provided by 
 iry for the use of her Majesty. As 
 lily imagined, her Majesty is not par- 
 ticularly pleased. Fleury admits that there is 
 pleasure, but professes himself unable 
 Iter the state of tilings. ' In order to bring 
 about the desired distinction between les femmes 
 ■ \ut and les femmes comme il en faut on 
 back and on wheels, the former would have 
 vert to the condition of shabbiness that pre- 
 vailed during the reign of Louis Philippe,' he said
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 235 
 
 the other day. ' The Court would have to have 
 the courage of the Comte de Lambertye, who, I 
 should add, did not act from motives of disap- 
 pointed pride.' And then he told me a story 
 which, even in the annals of shady horse-dealing 
 and horse-coping, it would be difficult to beat. 
 
 " When about two years ago at Lord Pem- 
 broke's death part of his stables was sold, few 
 dared to venture on the purchase because they 
 were under the impression that without the head 
 groom and the head coachman the whole would 
 come to grief, and both these worthies — but 
 especially the latter — demanded terms which were 
 absolutely prohibitory. Both, moreover, required 
 special agreements for two or three years and 
 specifying their duties beyond which they were 
 not bound to perform any. More plucky than 
 the rest the Comte de Lambertye submitted to 
 every one of their demands — and to his cost, for 
 he soon discovered that neither the head groom 
 nor the head coachman, nor the two combined, 
 had brought Lord Pembroke's establishment to 
 the pitch of perfection it had enjoyed ; but that 
 this perfection had been due to the active sur- 
 veillance of his lordship himself, and also, perhaps, 
 to the intelligent care of his lordship's kinsman, 
 M. de Montgomery who, out of the twenty two 
 horses constituting the stable, bought in two 
 thirds. 
 
 " Comte de Lambertye, who is very young and
 
 i mm Kt :urren rs < >l 
 
 nnOCent, is Hot a fool 1>\ any means. 
 
 I.. .^k tlic-' i\\<» Englishmen to rescind their 
 
 nent would have been so much waste of 
 
 he sold all his new purchases and 
 
 In the i\\" vilest crocks imaginable, with 
 
 h he showed himself every day in the Bois, 
 
 r<\ u disgust of the head coachman, who 
 
 to drive them. At night tin: head groom had 
 
 ike th<- latter' s place. In a few weeks both 
 
 im and the coachman offered to tear up 
 
 mtracts. That was exactly what the 
 
 wanted." 
 
 But, as Fleury remarked, it required a good 
 
 deal of courage on the part of a man to do this, 
 
 still more on the part of women, the majority of 
 
 whom were young, many exceedingly handsome, 
 
 all very elegant, and whose great ambition it 
 
 seemed to be to outvie each other in the beauty 
 
 and costliness of their carriages and horses. By 
 
 time I was a young man of over twenty, and 
 
 /eral visits to London in the season, 
 
 which enabled me to appreciate the difference — of 
 
 rom a merely amateurish point of view — 
 
 the two capitals in the matter of horse- 
 
 ] and conveyances. Well, the trained and 
 
 ly critical eye of the real connoisseur would 
 
 tionably awarded the palm for merit 
 
 to the simple- elegance of the Row and the 
 
 Mile; to the uninitiated the spectacle 
 
 the Avenue de l'lmperatrice (at present
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 237 
 
 the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne) would 
 have appealed with greater effect. It was 
 more showy ; nevertheless, it was very beautiful, 
 and the Parisians of that and the preceding 
 generations had, from what I was told, never seen 
 anything like it. The aristocracy drove in the 
 Champs-Elysees and went to the races at Long- 
 champs before the advent of the Second Empire, 
 but as my informant observed, " their turn-outs as 
 a rule looked as if they had come out of a circus, 
 or else had been borrowed from a second-hand 
 coach-dealer's ; there was a great deal of brass 
 and metal about the harnesses, and yellow pre- 
 dominated in the colour of the carriages, but what 
 with the untidiness of the coachmen and footmen, 
 who, in spite or because of their gorgeous liveries, 
 were untidy, and the defective grooming of 
 the horses, it was but a poor show." During 
 the Restoration only a fifteenth part of the 
 royal stables was "drafted" annually; in Louis 
 Philippe's time the same, or nearly the same, 
 system prevailed. The accident which caused 
 the death of the late Comte de Paris' father was 
 owing to a mistake of one of the grooms; the 
 horse that was "put to" his carriage that day 
 had been " drafted " on account of his hard mouth. 
 During the Second Empire a third of the [mpe 
 rial stables was annually "drafted," but the 
 money thus spent would have simply made Louis 
 Philippe's hair stand on end, if the hair had
 
 l NDERCURREN is OF 
 i aJ, Nevertheless the result was verj 
 
 mtiful that the recollection in the shape 
 
 il pictures has remained bright and vivid 
 
 out these many, many years. I have no 
 
 to refer to notes to reconstruct the scenes ; 
 
 t. 1 have no notes bearing on that subject. 
 
 I have simply to sit still and let the pictures up- 
 
 before me. The backgrounds are almost 
 
 invariably the same ; it is either the Arc de 
 
 mphe standing like a grey pawn against a 
 
 i blue sky or the masses of dark green of the 
 
 apparently forming an impenetrable barrier 
 
 at th<- end of the Avenue de l'Imperatrice. That 
 
 fashionable Paris" foregathered during 
 
 spring aim 1 summer afternoons in the sixties, 
 
 md to 1"- seen. And verily, all had their 
 
 A\\. whether they played active or merely pas- 
 
 parts, even unto the two magnificent gen- 
 
 darmes on horseback, with their tall bearskins, 
 
 wh<> got their due share of admiration while they 
 
 ilated the traffic. 
 
 The first in the field was generally Mdme. Feuil- 
 
 lant with her two charming daughters, mere girls 
 
 ;it that period. The whole of the turn-out was 
 
 ►lutely perfect, from an artistic point of view 
 
 -I am not quite so sure about the other 
 
 it— from the small heads of the two big 
 
 steppers, with large tufts of Parma violets 
 
 at tl dstalls, to the hood which appeared to
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 239 
 
 do duty as a storehouse for similar bouquets large 
 and small. Violets predominated in the whole of 
 the arrangement ; they were conspicuous in the 
 bonnet of Mdme. Feuillant herself — a bonnet with 
 3. vallance and which enframed the face like a 
 portrait ; the. footman and coachman had huge 
 nosegays of violets, the tint of which harmonised 
 admirably with the collars and cuffs of their dark 
 green liveries. And the spectator who was not 
 overburdened with worldly goods silently tried to 
 calculate the probable amount of the florist's bill, 
 who supplied them every day of the week. 
 
 More conspicuous, though not by reason of its 
 floral adornment, was the carriage of Mdme. de 
 Metternich. It was yellow, and yellow had 
 almost entirely disappeared in those days, to be 
 revived, however, later on. But in the early 
 sixties only Mdmes. de Gallifet, de Jaucourt, and 
 the Austrian Ambassadress patronised that colour. 
 
 Then came Rothschilds' turn-outs, always more 
 remarkable for their magnificent horses than for 
 the beauty of their carriages, and hard upon them 
 the landau of Mdlle. Schneider, who as yet was 
 not the Duchesse de Gerolstein, but simply La 
 Belle Helene. 1 
 
 1 During the Exhibition of 1867, Mdle. Schneider made 1 bel that 
 she would pass through the gates exclusively reserved l<>i ili<- 
 sovereigns and royal princes then visiting Paris, <>n<- day ^In- 
 appeared with the panels of her landau adorned with 1 fan* j 1 ".11 
 of-arms. The gatekeeper challenging the footman, the lattei 
 replied — " The Duchesse de Gdrol tein." The bet was won.
 
 I Rl URRENTS OF 
 
 four and five there wai 
 
 tir et expectation among the 
 
 "la Plage," better known today as 
 
 I >( i i\ In a little while there 
 
 n the horizon lour troopers oi some 
 
 jriment ol the Imperial Guards, flanked by 
 
 il, ami immediately afterwards came the 
 
 of the little Prince Imperial followed by 
 
 scort of the same regiment. To the 
 
 rode i In- officer in charge, with 
 
 i trumpeter by his side; to the right M. l>achon, 
 
 riding-master and equerry, in a gold- 
 
 roidered green tunic, cocked hat with black 
 
 white breeches and jack-boots. About 
 
 period, however, M. Bachon's office was an 
 
 • sinecure, the Prince having met with an 
 
 nt which disabled him for many, many 
 
 tonths from mounting his ponies and the cause 
 
 "I which accident subsequently became also the 
 
 his premature and sad death in Zululand, 
 
 the ei f the accident itself had 
 
 entirely disappeared. 2 
 
 s is the left side of the beginning of the 
 ;ne on coming from the Champs-Elysees. 
 
 on the day the particulars of the Prince's 
 
 - was written entirely from memory, 
 
 facts are correct. "Several of the 
 
 had a foreign (English?) riding-master 
 
 al traditions of the French school, 
 
 which M. liachon, the Prince's 
 
 s probably unable and certainly unwilling to 
 
 n had been second master to the celebrated
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 241 
 
 Shortly afterwards came the Emperor in his 
 phaeton without an escort of any kind and only 
 his aide-de-camp by his side. The pace of his 
 Orloffs, which had cost 40,000 francs, was re- 
 markable and somewhat dangerous to those who 
 got in their way, for every now and then, and up 
 to the last, the Imperial whip forgetting that he 
 was in France and not in England mistook his 
 nearside for his offside. Not once but a dozen 
 
 M. d'Aure in Paris, afterwards he had taught at Saumur. 
 M. d'Aure, however, though a most brilliant horseman himself, 
 had not founded a school of horsemanship. He was what I 
 should call a brilliant equestrian improvisator rather than a sterling 
 teacher. M. Bachon was an excellent riding-master and that was 
 all. He had none of the flashes of genius of his chief. He taught 
 the Prince to ride perfectly broken-in ponies, and tacitly discoun- 
 tenanced all showy riding and tricks. And the showy riding and 
 tricks were exactly what the little lad seemed to like most. Fired 
 by the example of his playmates who vaulted in the saddle while 
 their tiny mounts were going at a gallop, jumped down again, and 
 repeated the feat over and again in spite of their frequent tumbles, 
 the Prince tried to do the same, and one summer evening at Saint- 
 Cloud while the Emperor was looking on, his son came heavily to 
 the ground. He was up again in a moment, and there was no sign 
 that he was badly or even slightly hurt. Had there been such a 
 sign, the Emperor v. ould have been too seriously alarmed to coun- 
 tenance for a single moment the continuation of the game, for 
 assuredly no man ever loved his child better than Louis Napoleon 
 loved his. The boy returned that affection a hundredfold, and it 
 was this sweet trait in his character that caused him to hide his 
 pain, for he fancied his father was annoyed with him for his 
 inferiority to his playfellows. Was his father annoyed, and did he 
 show his annoyance ? I cannot say. Certain is it that the little 
 Prince went on vaulting ; young as he was he would nol 
 
 " I know of a similar case of perseveiam e on his father's part. 
 One severe winter while li<- was staying .it Leamington there was 
 a great deal of skating, and one of the favo 1 was to 
 
 jump over an upturned chair while going ai .1 greal pa< • , I 
 
 I:
 
 UND1 K« i RR1 NTS 01 
 
 1 heard the indignant Jehu exclaim 
 oing i". the brute ? Where did 
 
 i to ilr Though no man looked 
 
 . horseback than Napoleon III., he left 
 
 g almost immediately after he ascended 
 
 ept on special occasions such as 
 
 and at Compiegne while out hunting. 
 
 idy at that time the Emperor had his horses 
 
 n in by M. Faverol de Kerbrech, just as he 
 
 his new Loots worn by his barber. Then 
 
 the Empress in her elegant caleche drawn 
 
 with postilions, outrider, and grooms 
 
 ■ n and gold, the first-named wearing 
 
 caps half hidden by the golden fringe of 
 
 ttempted the feat several times without success, coming 
 
 b time with a tremendous crash that made the lookers-on 
 
 ild not give in, though, and finally conquered the 
 
 • ome back to the little Prince who, after that night went on 
 
 riding lessons, but so languidly that M. Bachon began 
 
 ach him with laziness. Instead of jumping into the saddle 
 
 ■■: ont to do, he had to be assisted, and in a little while 
 
 ■ lifted on to his pony. M. Bachon, as yet ignorant of what had 
 
 i remptorily bade him one day to place his foot into the 
 
 . then it all came out. Intensely frightened, the riding- 
 
 iter immediately communicated with the Emperor, who only 
 
 i his son's fall in connection with his pluck. For 
 
 months and months the child suffered and never mounted his 
 
 radually, but the habit he had contracted 
 
 himself into the saddle by means of his hands clung to 
 
 : his friends in England could bear testimony to 
 
 : his death in Zululand. Trusting to his 
 
 to his horse which was already in 
 
 'n ; th< be caught hold for the purpose, gave 
 
 the foe by himself."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 243 
 
 Amidst all this splendour the elegant simplicity 
 of Lord and Lady Cowley's carriage, returning 
 from the " Folly Saint-James" to the Embassy in 
 the Faubourg Saint- Honore, passed almost unper- 
 ceived, just as later on the turn-out of Lord Cow- 
 ley's successor (Lord Lyons), which was equally 
 elegant, though a trifle less simple, would have 
 attracted little or no notice but for one of its 
 occupants — a fat black and tan terrier, gravely 
 seated by the side of his lordship and the prop- 
 erty, I believe, of the then Mr. (now Sir) Edward 
 Malet, her Majesty's late Ambassador at Berlin. 
 In those days, Lord Lyons was not the familiar 
 figure to the Parisians he became subsequently. 
 They had seen his immediate predecessor for 
 over a decade and a half, and during the fifty 
 years that had elapsed since Wellington bought 
 the former mansion of the Dues de Charost from 
 Napoleon's favourite sister for ,£24,000, to con- 
 vert it into the English Embassy, there had been 
 in reality only about half a dozen chief tenants, 
 including the purchaser and the latest comer, both 
 Lord Granville and Lord Cowley having filled the 
 office twice during that time. 1 
 
 Wellington's bargain was a good one; at pre 
 sent the property is worth eight times the amount 
 he paid for it. It was the only bargain he had 
 
 1 During the century and five years that have elapsed sim e th< 
 First Revolution there have been twelve English ambassadoi 
 France, forty French ambassadors to England. 
 
 R 2
 
 \ I- 01 l'l 1 1: SECOND EMPIRE 
 
 for on his own account he spent 
 . w eeks. But we must uot forget 
 Wellington came to teach the Parisians to 
 ntly and cleanly like gentlemen, to repair 
 hiefdone l>y that libertine of a Napoleon. 
 That was probably the reason why he; provided 
 so liberally for laGrassini, one of Napoleon's mis- 
 Mr Wellington was such a saint.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Joshua, the Son of Nun, was either a very clever 
 man himself, or else the two emissaries he sent to 
 spy the land, even Jericho, were thorough world- 
 lings. Instead of applying for information to the 
 " respectability that drives a gig " they went straight 
 to Rahab, who was the reverse of respectable, 
 because they knew that she would be able to tell 
 them better where the shoe pinched in that 
 prosperous country than ninety-nine per cent, ol 
 the ordinary inhabitants. For Rahab, wherever 
 and whenever we meet her, whether it be in 
 the West or in the East, whether it be in 
 ancient or modern times, is sure to be possessed 
 of more secrets than all the family doctors and 
 lawyers of the locality put together. The storie 
 of Holofernes and of Samson might have been 
 left unwritten for the good they have done in 
 teaching captains or statesmen reticence aboul 
 their own and the public's affairs whil< the) ar< 
 under the spell of Dalila. As a con equenci
 
 >ERCl RREN rs OJ 
 
 not only sceptical with regard to the 
 
 nind of 1 [olofernes and Samson them- 
 
 imewhat incredulous with regard to the 
 
 Samson's and Holofernes' womankind. 
 
 Byron had formulated the results of a 
 
 ind's neglect of his wife in one line, Rahab knew 
 
 that " what one man neglects another picks up." 
 
 Rahab of the Second Empire — as distinct 
 from la demi-mondaine * was probably neither 
 
 lake this distinction clear to the reader, I must 
 
 • the inventor of the term itself. " But just as they gave 
 
 d by Columbus the name of a navigator who 
 
 t':cr him. so they have given to this word ' Demi-Monde' 
 
 a hat it really has ; and this neologism which 
 
 to introduce into the French language, hospitable 
 
 s in the nineteenth century, serves to designate, through 
 
 :or or carelessness of those who use the word, the class of 
 
 I wished to separate the others ; or at any rate 
 
 confound into one category two categories, not only very 
 
 from each other, but even very inimical to each other. 
 
 " In the interest of the dictionaries of the future let me lay down 
 
 nciple that the ' Demi-Monde,' contrary to the common be- 
 
 1 in spite of what is printed, does not represent the ruck of 
 
 rourtesans, but the class of women that have lost caste. It is not 
 
 ne to belong to the 'Demi-Monde.' It requires 
 
 ientials to be admitted to it. Madame d'Ange says it in 
 
 L " That world represents a fall for those who start 
 
 the ladder, but it is a rise to those who begin at 
 
 world, in fact, is composed of women, all of 
 
 honour n, who either as young girls, wives, or mothers were 
 
 admit-.' bt into and warmly welcomed by the best families 
 
 vscrted. The names they bear are simultaneously 
 
 society which has ostracised them, by men, women. 
 
 horn you and I profess the most deserved esteem 
 
 ::i, by a tacit convention, we never mention their wives. 
 
 N everthcless, as it will not do to be too 
 
 ly when one is bent on amusing one's self always, 
 
 • admits young girls whose dtbut in life 
 
 e step, women who merely live with a man
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 247 
 
 better bred nor better educated than the majority 
 of her predecessors and successors. Now and then 
 one met with a replica of Alphonsine Plessis (the 
 original of La Dame atix Came" lias) who in spite 
 of her neglected childhood, humble birth and 
 profligate associations was naturally refined ; but as 
 a rule the Lola Montes type predominated. There 
 was neither a Ninon de l'Enclos nor an Esther 
 Guimont, still less an Aspasia among the cour- 
 
 whose name they bear, elegant and pretty foreign women recom- 
 mended and vouched for by one of the familiars of that circle under 
 her personal responsibility — in short, all the women who originally 
 belonged to a more regularly constituted society and whose fall was 
 caused by love, but by love only ; nudus, sed pauper. 
 
 " That world begins where the lawful wife finishes ; it finishes 
 where the venal wife begins. It is divided from the world of honest 
 women by the public scandal it provokes ; it is divided from the 
 world of courtesans by money. On the one side its boundary is 
 determined by an article of the Code, on the other by a roll of gold 
 pieces. The last argument it clings to is this : ' We give ourselves, 
 we do not sell ourselves ; ' and a member of that world is ostra- 
 cised for having sold herself, as she was ostracised from the regu- 
 larly constituted society for having given herself. In that world 
 the man always remains the debtor of the woman, and the latter 
 may flatter herself that she is respected as of yore on seeing her 
 debtor treat her in the street as if she were still his equal. On 
 those women who have recovered their freedom of action om 
 not bestow one's name, but one may offer her one's arm al an) 
 time. They give themselves to those who please them, not to 
 whom they happen to please. Nevertheless, everything in thai world 
 is still strictly conducted in accordance with the love of pl< 
 and the pleasure of love ; and that very same world mighl easily be 
 mistaken now-a-days for that of the women 'who want none d 
 him ; rather than for that of the men 'who want none of her. 1 In 
 spite of all this, there is no denying that during the latti 
 lations of the social planet these different woi bei ome 90 
 
 often intermixed as to have engendered by cont.u | rri< iou ■ 
 
 inoculations." — Alex. Duma-,, Preface to Le Demi-Monde.
 
 I mm RCT KK1 NTS 0] 
 
 riod. \ ari< ms causes combined, 
 
 • them a different standing From 
 
 iters had occupied during the 
 
 Though no saint, Napoleon I. 
 
 the courtesan under no matter what guise 
 
 her trade. Neither I ,a< rrassini nor Mdlle. 
 
 would have found favour in his sight it 
 
 had used her talents as a singer or as an 
 
 for a bait. "Manx- women have fallen 
 
 they wire on the stage;" he said one 
 
 "no woman should be on the stage for 
 
 ison that she has fallen, and she 
 
 should not make the stage a pedestal for the 
 
 exhibition of her charms to be sold to the highest 
 
 I ir having done this before her marriage 
 
 ichbuilder Simon, the notorious Mile. 
 
 one night shown the door of the; 
 
 Tuih r:< s, after she had lieen made ''an honest" 
 
 .1. 1 during the Restoration all mention of 
 
 in was distinctly avoided in polite 
 
 ml she was certainly not made the 
 
 of newspaper articles. Although there 
 
 ang princes in Louis Philippe's time, 
 
 all I edingly circumspect in their 
 
 into with this class of women. The 
 
 princ<s had, if not the fear of God, the fear of 
 
 father before them, and the latter dreaded 
 
 the "austere and respectable M. 
 
 who nevertheless was on one occasion 
 
 respondence with Esther Guimont.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 249 
 
 Justice compels one to state, though, that there 
 was no epistolary interchange of sweet nothings 
 but simply a very practical and hard-headed 
 attempt on the part of the Minister to win over 
 to his cause Emile de Girardin, who was an 
 intimate, albeit platonic, friend of Esther. But 
 at no time during the period just reviewed did the 
 courtesan claim moral and social equality with the 
 grande dame de par le monde ; it was reserved for 
 the Second Empire to see that claim preferred on 
 the former's part, and to have the claim admitted 
 by society at large. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Emperor himself 
 was largely responsible from beginning to end for 
 this demoralising condition of things. The Paivas, 
 Skittles, Cora Pearls, and others originally be- 
 longed to the same class whence had sprung 
 Marguerite Bellanger, and there was no reason in 
 the minds of the former why they should not hold 
 their heads as high as the latter ; for let there be 
 no mistake about it, the discovery of Marguerite's 
 love epistles (?) after the fall of the Empire taught 
 the people nothing that they did not already know, 
 and the compeers of Marguerite were even better 
 informed than the world at large. There was no 
 reason why the courtesans who had not attra< ted 
 the sovereign's attention as yet should not hold 
 their heads as high — in anticipation of what might 
 happen — as the one who had; inasmuch as the 
 next day might bring the desired distinction.
 
 l NDERCURREN is 01 
 
 nction were denied to them, 
 npl) justified in considering them 
 . the majority of the grandes 
 e monde, the doings of the latter 
 but little from their own. The barrack- 
 ries that enlivened the soirees and dinner 
 i a De Paiva came straight from the 
 Tuileries, unless they went straight thither from 
 drawing room. When in the early 
 ning of the 10th August of every year, the 
 Morel disgorged its revellers, there was not a 
 tween the appearance and be- 
 ir of the Court beauties in their quasi- 
 of grisettes and that of the filles de joie 
 The women knew one another's 
 .nd biographies as if they had been play- 
 id schoolfellows; the men who escorted 
 lions had probably left their clubs 
 ther the night before, and would most likely 
 again in a few hours to discuss the 
 (?) of their respective partners. Several 
 amo: proud and aristocratic cavaliers had 
 
 on one or two occasions the more or less 
 lakers, or, at any rate, the ambas- 
 ihe two contending factions when 
 of its members found themselves on ground 
 than Morel's al fresco ball, and 
 the coast clear to one another. 
 t notable mission of that kind was the one 
 lertaken by the Due de Gramont-Caderousse
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 251 
 
 — " notre due," as the counterjumpers and clerks 
 of that period who aped him in everything, 
 called him. Skittles made her appearance at a 
 meet where her presence was objected to by a 
 foreign princess. The Due was despatched to 
 Skittles, and knowing the temper of the lady, 
 thought he would proceed diplomatically. "You who 
 are at the head of your profession," he said, most 
 insinuatingly, " how dare you run the risk of being 
 asked to leave?" "That's where you are mis- 
 taken," was the answer, " I am not at the head of 
 my profession, it's the princess. That's why I am 
 here ; you may tell her I say so." 
 
 History does not relate how the Due got out 
 of the dilemma ; and my only reason for telling the 
 anecdote was to show by something more than 
 mere assertion the attitude of the courtesan 
 towards the grande dame in those days. And 
 let it not be thought that Skittles was the only 
 one to censure by comparison. With her terrible 
 French, which was that of an illiterate stable boy, 
 and which Alphonse Daudet faithfully reproduced 
 in Sap ho, where she figures under the name of 
 " Wilkie Cob," Cora Pearl was even more brutal 
 than Skittles. She not only lashed the women of 
 the Imperial entotiragc, but poured the vials ol her 
 contempt on the men who Hung fabulous sums ;u 
 her feet. " Your princes and kings," she said, in 
 her gibberish, "your princes and kings, I have 
 trampled upon them ; and then they went for
 
 I MM RCURREN l - 01 
 
 to the 1 w hy, the Tweelenes 
 
 room." 
 
 de Paiva, afterwards Grafjn 
 
 Henckel von Donnersmarck, was even more 
 
 .'. more vicious than Skittles and Cora Pearl 
 
 She had the advantage over both, 
 
 Ji. in the possession of more brain. The 
 
 : ,i German - Jewish pedlar named 
 
 '.man, her childhood had been spent in the 
 
 tto of Moscow, which she left to marry a poor 
 
 rich tailor whose name was Villoing. A few 
 
 -he became the inseparable companion 
 
 <>f the famous pianist, Henri Herz, with whom 
 
 visited the principal cities of Europe, until, 
 
 frightened at her extravagance,he was compelled to 
 
 from her. With the natural aptitude of most 
 
 mans and Russians for picking up languages, 
 
 Pauline Lachman soon mastered French, which 
 
 ifterwards spoke fluently. With the natural 
 
 intelligence of her race, she profited by her 
 
 iation with Herz, which brought her into 
 
 with some of the foremost artists and 
 
 t those days to get a layer of veneer 
 
 which both Skittles and Cora Pearl lacked, which 
 
 lid not have taken the trouble to acquire 
 
 if th< done so, and at which with the 
 
 -ular conceit of the English cad — whether male 
 
 male — they jeered. Nevertheless, Pauline 
 
 Lachman. as I have said, was more brutal and 
 
 vicious than either of these. There was
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 253 
 
 no attempt on their part to enact the grande 
 dame, to ape the Aspasia of ancient Greece, or 
 the grand courtesan of the Renaissance ; they 
 professed no admiration for journalists and 
 authors nor did they seek to entertain them ; 
 at the same time, their hospitality, on the rare 
 occasions it was exercised, had no arriere pcnscc 
 in it ; it was not gratitude for a favour to come in 
 the shape of an advertisement. They were 
 not devoured with envy of the court beauties ; 
 they looked upon them frankly as competitors, 
 and hated them accordingly. They only de- 
 fended themselves when attacked directly or 
 indirectly. 
 
 Pauline Lachman attacked both court beauties 
 and others without the smallest provocation. 
 Unlike Esther Guimont, Anna Deslions, Skittles, 
 and Cora Pearl themselves, she never admitted 
 another woman to her parties ; and one evening 
 when a guest, who was probably somewhat weary 
 of that everlasting "one woman arrangement," 
 casually remarked upon her solitude as regarded 
 female companionship, she flew at him like a 
 tigress. " If you would like me to send for some 
 of the Faubourg St. Germain beauties, you have 
 only to say so," she snarled. " I am sufficiently 
 rich to treat you to a few duchesses ; their fees 
 do not run higher than some of ours, at any rate, 
 not higher than mine." The reader will agree 
 with me that Pauline Lachman was more brutal,
 
 
 I \l«! KCl RR1 NTS 01 
 
 in her strictures than 
 
 tin the exact proportions oi truth and 
 
 ntained in those accusations is im- 
 
 or, if not impossible, at variance with my 
 
 i.il inclinations. If the chronique scandaleuse 
 
 nd Empire were not so inextricably 
 
 ! up with its political history, I would fain 
 
 kept my pen clean of the former altogether; 
 
 I cannot do so except at the risk of 
 
 iming unintelligible. When one stands con- 
 
 .. ith a rtgime which, during its eighteen 
 
 ;istence waged four formidable wars, not 
 
 -■ of which on careful examination seems to have 
 
 iitated by the nation's welfare, the 
 
 ral impulse is to look for the causes of such 
 
 below the surface. 
 
 And .1 glance below the surface reveals, behind 
 
 glittering Court which every one knows, with 
 
 lors, chamberlains, generals, ministers, 
 
 and ladies of honour, a seething mass of intrigue 
 
 and corruption to find the like of which we must 
 
 rt to the reigns of Charles II. in England and 
 
 : I -■ XV, in France. True, there is no titular 
 
 of the Emperor, either in the shape of a 
 
 maine, a Duchess of Portsmouth or a 
 
 Marquisi mpadour, but it is doubtful whether 
 
 hile Mr,. Palmer, Louise de Kerouailles and 
 
 d'Etioli • more fatal to the Stuart 
 
 irbon than the women who surrounded
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 255 
 
 the nephew of the great Bonaparte. Not one, 
 save Princesse Clotilde inspired the public with 
 that respect which is the first and foremost con- 
 dition of the prestige of a dynasty, whether that 
 dynasty be hereditary, founded by the sword or 
 by intrigue as were the dynasties of Louis Philippe 
 and Louis Napoleon. Of one thing we may be 
 sure, in spite of the cheers that greeted the 
 Empress in public ; the French spoke of her and 
 the ultra-fashionable throng that surrounded her 
 as the English of the latter end of the seventeenth 
 century spoke of the court beauties of Charles II., 
 as the French of the middle of the eighteenth 
 century spoke of the grandes dames of Louis 
 XV. 's Court. And the gossip, an attractive dish 
 of truth and fiction, especially where the Empress 
 herself was concerned, spread over the borders of 
 the land ; and, as in the days of Charles II. and 
 Louis XV., found its way to the Courts of Europe. 
 Smart attaches, if not their chiefs themselves, sent 
 amusing accounts of the fails el gestes of the 
 women and men that foregathered at Com- 
 piegne, Fontainebleau, and the Tuileries ; ac- 
 counts which vitiated beforehand all the serious 
 documents emanating from the Ouai d'Orsay ; the 
 recipients of the latter refusing to take an sirieux 
 the political aspirations of a sovereign who toler- 
 ated around him a society fully as profligate 
 and corrupt as that which had danced and dis- 
 ported itself in the salons and gardens of Ver
 
 UNDERCURRENTS 01 
 
 .. . .i si M'iri y lt'd by a 
 illowed by marriage," it is true, in- 
 had s fully angred for an Im 
 I husband, where the other had only angled 
 R j .: lo\ er, but a Pompadour for all that, and 
 '.-. difli red from Jeanne Antoinette Poisson 
 i tlv ion of fewer brains, and if it were 
 c of more vanity and misdirected ambition. 
 The comparison between the mistress of Louis 
 XV. a\\A the lawful wife of Napoleon III. was 
 eking. It was practically forced 
 veral notes the source of which I 
 \ indicated at the beginning of the 
 papers and for which I could 
 »m in An Englishman in Paris. 
 5 no indication as to the exact date of these 
 . nor were they all written at the same time, 
 but several events to which they refer incidentally 
 them to belong to the first half of the sixties, 
 1 have given most of them in extenso, for the 
 r, not content with pointing out casually the 
 jsbetween Madame Lenormandd'Etioles and 
 I •-: s of the French, takes up each moral 
 tal trait of their characters and provides 
 I, semi -social backeround for each of 
 allowing us to judge for our- 
 ell. 
 
 jusl returned from Compiegne, where 
 
 1 nol or three years, and was irresistibly 
 
 a conversation with Vely Pasha at a
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 257 
 
 dinner party at the Tuileries shortly after the 
 Emperor's marriage. The haunted look we noticed 
 then on the faces of the courtiers and even on 
 those of the Sovereigns has altogether disappeared. 
 On s amuse ferme} and I am not at all certain 
 whether they are not enjoying themselves a little 
 too much, and in a fashion not altogether calculated 
 to enhance the prestige of the dynasty with the 
 other courts of Europe. I must confess that my fore- 
 sight, or let me say my expectations, in that respect 
 have been woefully disappointed, although at the 
 outset they bade fair to be realised. I did not 
 for a moment imagine that the Tuileries would 
 become dowdy, dull and respectable the greater 
 part of the year and ridiculously bourgeois on so- 
 called grand occasions as it was in the days of 
 Louis Philippe ; but I fancied that the golden 
 mean would be observed ; I fancied that the 
 company there would become a cross between that 
 of Versailles, in the most brilliant days of Louis 
 XIV. and that of the First Empire at its most 
 prosperous period ; in other words, I fancied that 
 part of the Faubourg St. Germain would gradually 
 rally to the Second Empire, and neutralise by its 
 grand air and unimpeachable manners the too 
 obviously soldatesque sans-facon, from which even 
 the best of Napoleon III.'s marshals and generals 
 — with the exception of Macmahon — are not wholly 
 
 1 A paraphrase of a French commercial term " ached 1 ferme," 
 that is, buying outright without any restrictions.
 
 UNDERCURREN rS OF 
 
 ..what too conquering attitude of the 
 
 lian element towards the women, and tin 
 
 tallenging tactics oi the latter in response. 
 
 ; two <vt ions of society no doubt 
 
 mmended itself to the Kmperor, especially when. 
 
 cession to the throne, he cast a look 
 
 nd him a\u\ found himself deserted by the 
 
 ;./<. and notably by the female part of 
 
 it, that had graced the Salon of the Elysee during 
 
 presidency. With this end in view he 
 
 I have willingly made many sacrifices to con- 
 
 the old noblesse, and even gone a step 
 
 further than his uncle under similar circumstances. 
 
 Napoleon III. would have put the old noblesse 
 
 ^hort of the very highest, by which I 
 
 . that he would have entrusted the men with 
 
 diplomatic missions as he eventually did with a 
 
 that came to him. although at that time he 
 
 would not have conferred a ministry on a 
 
 n partisan of Legitimacy. 1 ' These people 
 
 a I.'s policy with regard to the Faubourg Saint- 
 i.iin may be judged by the following scene which is scarcely 
 In 1811, at the death of M.J. Chenier, Chateaubriand 
 1 his vacant chair at the Acaddmie. As a matter 
 the opening speech of the author of Le Genie du 
 was looked forward to with considerable interest. 
 r was equally anxious to see what the great writer 
 on the events of the Revolution, the trial, con- 
 dition of Louis XVI., and subsequent trans- 
 I ere submitted to Napoleon, who was the 
 
 1 with them. He began by venting his bad 
 jr on the members of the Acade'mie, who would have quietly 
 these things to go forth to the world without considering 
 1 they might do. He never ceased talking about it to his
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 259 
 
 understand nothing of politics, and I did not 
 want them for that. I only required them for 
 decorative purposes, for they are eminently fitted 
 to wear gold lace. I would have willingly gilded 
 them on all their edges,' he said afterwards. 
 
 entourage ; in fact, for several days it was the only subject of his 
 conversation. M. d'Haussonville (the grandfather of the present 
 count), who was one of Napoleon's first chamberlains, has preserved 
 for us the exact words with which the Tuileries rang at the time. 
 " This surpasses everything ! I am killing myself body and soul 
 to make this country forget her divisions in the past ; I cured her of 
 her revolutionary fever by intoxicating her with military glory. 
 All my efforts have been directed to making old and new France 
 live in peace under my sceptre. I have gathered in unison around 
 me men who formerly detested one another. I have succeeded in 
 causing to live in amity at my court and near me, erstwhile 
 Emigres, members of the Committee of Public Safety and regicides, 
 for you Cambaceres, you also voted for the death of Louis XVI., 
 albeit that you deny having done so, but I know very well what to 
 believe and what not to believe. Having done all this, am I 
 tamely to submit to a vainglorious man of letters compromising 
 the happy results of my policy, simply in order to afford him the 
 chance of elegantly rounding off his periods. They are a lot of 
 ungrateful idiots indeed. They have no idea what they are doing ; 
 they have not the least comprehension of the part I am playing. 
 The royalists have always their mouths full of Henri IV. But I 
 am Henri IV. My situation is absolutely similar to his ; I am 
 simply recasting his work and in much more difficult times. Nay, 
 I am, perhaps, doing his work better than he did it, although he 
 was a very able prince. He was placed between the champions of 
 the League and the Protestants, just as I am placed between tin- 
 revolutionaries and the partisans of the ancien regime. Winn In- 
 attempted to do something for "his former co-religionists, the 
 Leaguers shouted that he had remained a Huguenot. When In- 
 granted a favour to the Catholics, Duplessis-Mornay and the 
 companions of his first campaigns shunted that he had forgotten 
 his old and true friends. I am labouring under similar diffii ull i< 
 People hold their tongues or else they recriminate with < losed 
 doors because I do not allow them to adopt a loud tone. But foi 
 all that, I can hear with half an ear ; I know ex.e tly how the land 
 
 S 2
 
 I NDERCURREN I's OP 
 
 : them have consented to be gilt in 
 but, unlike their predecessors under 
 1 i Empire, they consider that the obliga- 
 : i ntirel) on the side of the dispenser of 
 
 and the nephew lias not the strength 
 icter of the uncle to tell them to leave the 
 I rt.if not France, unless their presence confers 
 credit and not discredit on the dynasty. In fact, I 
 nether any except the most drastic meas- 
 in that respect would be of the least avail 
 the thin- has gone on too long, and instead 
 of thi \ i rsailles society of Louis XIV., blended 
 with some <>f the virtues of the military and civil 
 the Napoleonic era, we have a glitter- 
 but utterly dissolute and ethically worthless 
 ty, which is simply a startling reproduction 
 of the Pompadour era, plus the swagger and 
 ick-language of the beau sabreur at his worst 
 m, in spite of that swagger and his late 
 successes in the field I suspect to be lacking in 
 iterling soldierly qualities and unquestionable 
 warlike talents o\ his devanciers. The Court, as I 
 
 ind if I did not impose my own laws, these people would 
 
 devo ther, for the passions that are at the bottom of our 
 
 bit more intense than those of the Vert 
 
 i all these beauteous ladies who hold their heads 
 
 d refuse to al my court would be in a sad plight 
 
 lions loose. It is I who protect them all, and after 
 
 this, I shall not be fool enough to be defied openly 
 
 paladin who does not understand in the least degree the work 
 
 complishing. M. de Chateaubriand is not pleased with the 
 
 is I have made it for him. Very well, let him go and
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 261 
 
 saw it at Compiegne a day or two ago, presents 
 the most heterogeneous gathering of humanity 
 it has ever been my lot to behold away from 
 the gaming-rooms at Baden-Baden, with which 
 it has also one trait in common besides its out- 
 ward elegance, namely, its absolute egoism, the 
 unscrupulous hostility of each of its members 
 towards his neighbour, like himself in pursuit 
 of a favour, a possibly profitable transaction, or 
 an intrigue. Like the gathering at Baden-Baden 
 it is, as I have said, composed of utterly dis- 
 similar elements. There is the semi-ruined old 
 noblesse side by side with the prosperous Jewish 
 financial fraternity ; there is the bourgeoisie with 
 all the greed of the French bourgeoisie of olden as 
 well as modern times thick upon it and sorely per- 
 plexed at its inability to keep its hoard ; there are 
 Harpagons emulating with wry faces the lavish- 
 ness of the Gramont-Caderousses and the 
 Demidoffs and the rapacious would-be Massenas 
 and spendthrift would-be Lasalles but lacking 
 the military genius that distinguished the Due 
 de Rivoli and the hero of Prentzlau. 
 
 " Do what one will, it is impossible to clos< 
 one's eyes to these facts forced upon one's notice 
 the moment one sets one's foot within the conn 
 circle, and the mental cataract which evidentl) pre 
 vents the Emperor from seeing them will, I am 
 afraid, have to be removed one day, remote or near, 
 with danger to himself and to his dynasty. I hi
 
 UND1 k( URREN is OF 
 
 alone are sufficient to make 
 
 md "ii end. and the culprits, whether 
 
 rure .is hawks or pigeons, invariably 
 
 i the army. Those convicted of cheat- 
 It not publicly — not merely suspected — 
 
 not only allowed to retain their commis- 
 
 . but are received at Court as if nothing 
 had happened. The Comte d'Andlau was 
 
 hi red-handed at Chantilly a twelvemonth 
 
 o before the revolution that cost Louis 
 Philippe his throne. He was compelled to lie 
 
 luring the remainder of the Citizen Monarchy, 
 
 and during the whole of the Second Republic, 
 
 nt he holds his head as high as ever. 1 
 
 A lieutenant in the Guards, a victim this one, 
 
 20,000 Irs. at one sitting. He had not a 
 
 ent towards the money, but he did not worry 
 
 himself in the least, and in the morning he simply 
 
 applied to the Emperor. The move was a 
 
 terly one, apart from the young fellow's 
 knowledge that the Emperor never refused an 
 appeal for money as long as he had any to give. 
 He wound up his request by saying that there were 
 only three courses open to him, viz., the appeal 
 
 is the same Comte d'Andlau who was implicated in the 
 
 7 and had to fly the country. He died 
 
 . very poor, in one of the South American 
 
 —the Argentine, I believe. When in 1870 he started for 
 
 I hi-, trunks got lost. On its recovery it was 
 
 ling but woman's underclothing, the property 
 
 nion who had joined him at Mctz.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 263 
 
 he ventured on, dishonour, or suicide. Of course 
 under the circumstances the Emperor could not 
 very well refuse if he had felt inclined to do so, 
 which, truth to tell, he did not. He could not 
 very well have had it said of him that he had 
 driven a promising young officer to suicide for 
 the sake of a few thousand francs. I know well 
 enough, though, what would have happened if 
 a similar request had been preferred to Wilhelm 
 of Prussia or Francis-Joseph of Austria who, 
 I have not the least doubt, are as tenacious of 
 the honour of their officers as is the Emperor 
 of the French. The honour of the officer would 
 have remained safe, but he would have had to 
 pay for it with the loss of his commission. 1 
 
 1 The laws on gambling in the army were and are very strict 
 both in Austria and Germany proper. I do not know enough of 
 Austria to be able to say what would have happened there under 
 similar circumstances, but I fancy the author of the note is correct 
 in his surmise that King Wilhelm would not have been quite so 
 lenient as was Napoleon III. At any rate I knew two Prussian 
 officers who lost their commissions for having gambled away more 
 than they could pay. In the one case the gambling debt was paid : 
 the gambler was, however, cashiered. During my stay in Paris 1 
 used to meet him frequently ; he had become a correspondent for 
 several German papers. In the other case the debt was not paid j 
 the dishonoured gambler was obliged to leave the country. He 
 took service in the French foreign legion. The last time I saw 
 him, about four years ago, he was doing well as a military coach 
 in London, for by that time he was close upon sixty. The late 
 Emperor Wilhelm, though, did not always punish so severely, 
 especially when the offender happened to be the gainer instead of 
 the loser. For some time after the revolution of 1849 the Dui In 
 of Baden was occupied by the Prussian troops thai had helped to 
 quell the insurrection. The officers quartered at Rastadl had been 
 especially cautioned against playing at Baden Baden. ( )ne summei
 
 i \|>1K( URREN I S 01 
 
 arcel) reprimanded the you 
 
 ; .1 bundle of notes, he handed 
 
 ■ rhe life of one of my soldiers 
 
 than the sum of which you stand 
 
 i aid, with that peculiar smile which 
 
 reatest charm. ■ But I am not at 
 
 all rich and I mi-ht not be able at all times to 
 
 m it at such a price. Go and sin no 
 
 If Napoleon III.'s goodness of heart there 
 
 cannot I smallest doubt, but I am afraid 
 
 being taken advantage of on all sides ; and, 
 
 knows it, and half of his sadness 
 is due to his knowledge. The sentence, 'The 
 
 then Prince) Wilhelm strolled into the gaming rooms 
 
 and noticed an officer in mufti at play. The officer was winning, 
 
 ich, but a good deal for a Prussian lieutenant, for there were 
 
 :. the red. He had begun with one and the 
 
 our had turned up twice. Just as he was about to pick up the 
 
 money he caught sight of the Prince watching him. Terror- 
 
 • stood as if rooted to the spot. The red turned up a , 
 
 irth time, still the officer did not move. At last 
 
 the maximum was reached, and the croupier asked- — " Combien a la 
 
 ■ . " Combien a la masse ?" shouted the croupier 
 
 ■ reupon the Prince walked round to the officer's side, 
 
 1 him on the shoulder and said gently — " Take up your money 
 
 •ur chiefs should catch you here." As a matter 
 
 he lieutenant did not want telling twice. A couple of 
 
 ppened to be a review at Rastadt. Prince 
 
 iight of the lieutenant and sent for him. " Lieu- 
 
 -aitl, "after you went away, the red turned up 
 
 I prevented you from winning four times the 
 
 maximum which you would have been sensible enough to stake. 
 
 draw r that amount. But take my advice : do 
 
 . M. Benazet is not the enemy to attack twice 
 
 nditions."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 265 
 
 life of one of my soldiers is worth more than the 
 sum of which you stand in need,' is very pretty, 
 but utterly untrue. I doubt whether Napoleon 
 III. uttered it for effect, I do not think so ; but 
 take his army from whatever point of view you 
 will — from the military, the moral, or the social — 
 there are not many officers in it the redemption 
 of whose life is worth 20,000 francs. 
 
 " This does not mean that there are no com- 
 petent and honourable men in that army to the 
 efficiency of which France will eventually have 
 to trust for her political supremacy in Europe ; but 
 these men are systematically snubbed, discouraged, 
 and thrust into the shade by the military Court 
 party, which is distinctly a creation of the Empress, 
 to whom the barrack-room manners of a Pelissier, 
 for instance, are naturally distasteful. She seems 
 to be entirely ignorant of the fact that between 
 the fall of the First Empire and the rise of the 
 Second there has sprung up a race of soldiers 
 as far removed from the very wonderful but never- 
 theless very ignorant and rough-hewn generals 
 of the great Napoleon as the latter were removed 
 from the highly-educated and highly-polished 
 but nevertheless the reverse of wonderful generals 
 of the ancien rdgimc, who, like the Due de Saint 
 Simon, grumbled and threw up their commissions 
 because at the age of twenty-seven they had gol 
 no farther than their colonelcy which, like that 
 of the immortal author of the Memoirs, their
 
 I MM Kl TURIN IS OF 
 
 had bought for them when they were 
 ; lads. That military court coterie dare 
 
 the claim- of a IVlissier, but it pooh- 
 claims of a Stoffel, a Trochu, and a 
 I others who arc their superiors in every way 
 pt in the art of bowing and scraping, leading 
 cotillon, and coining smart epigrams. These 
 men. the Stoffels and Trochus, are of opinion 
 if promotion cannot always be gained on the 
 Id face to face with the enemy, it should 
 at an) rate not be sought for in the drawing-room, 
 i'ii in the 1 -arrack's schoolroom, onthedrill- 
 nd, and in the camp. They are gentlemen in 
 acceptation of the term, somewhat Puri- 
 tanical as far as their profession is concerned and 
 quently as averse to the introduction of the 
 .ck-room into the boudoir — which is the 
 r way — as they are to the introduction of 
 loir element and influence into the army — 
 ch is the way of the court coterie. The Stoffels 
 1 rochus are the lives which are worth more 
 ian 20,000 francs a-piece, or would be if their 
 owners did not allow their tempers to be soured 
 by the others and did not keep sulking in their 
 
 ourt coterie objects to barrack-yard 
 inners a la Pelissier 1 in the drawing-room, they 
 
 : harping on the Due de Malakoff's name is prob- 
 ll-known story of the Due's behaviour on his 
 I :un neither strait-laced nor squeamish, but I 
 at it.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 267 
 
 do not appear to entertain a similar objection to 
 introducing 6o2idoir-'mfi\ience into the army. Of 
 course the coterie would fain preserve a mono- 
 poly in this respect, but the courtesan claims in 
 this, as in all other things, equality with the 
 aristocratic intrigante. Here is a story to that 
 effect which was running the round of Paris only 
 the other day, and a story running the round of 
 Paris soon spreads to the provinces and across 
 the frontier provided it be scandalous enough. 
 
 " Anna Deslions, whose real name is Deschiens 
 and who a few years ago was taken under the 
 wing of the famous Esther Guimont, lost her 
 father. I suppose he was neither worse nor 
 better than a great many French fathers of 
 the lower classes ; he was perfectly aware of his 
 daughter's doings, which knowledge did not pre- 
 vent him from living very comfortably on the 
 allowance she made him. Anna, it appears, was 
 never tired of extolling his virtues, and insisted 
 on his having a magnificent funeral, for the funds 
 for which she applied to her ' protector-in-chief ' 
 who happens to be a general of brigade and 
 a curmudgeon of the first water. He simply 
 applied to the Military Governor of Paris for 
 a battalion and the band of the regiment 
 quartered in the Faubourg Poissonniere for 
 the obsequies of a veteran of the First Empire^ 
 which request was granted most graciously. The 
 funeral service was held at St. Laurent, and the
 
 I mm k< URR] NTS 0] 
 
 I the bereaved daughter mustered 
 l'h,' papers gave a minute 
 .r. but somehow the story <>i 
 | out. The general was re- 
 Emperor, always anxious to 
 mdals, ordered the thing to be hushed up. 
 :-, stopped the general from inviting 
 ■ • for the celebration of the yearly 
 
 of old Deschiens's soul, which 
 le warrior wanted to do in imitation 
 f hi r-soldier, General Fabvier, who died 
 
 "When Esther Guimont, who intellectually, at 
 
 is a cut above the rest of ces dames, 
 
 told of the Emperor's displeasure at the 
 
 amity put upon the army, she had her answer 
 
 .. and truth compels one to admit that from 
 
 point of view it was unassailable. 'If the 
 
 Emperor is so tenacious about the honour of 
 
 his army.' she said, 'he should not allow his 
 
 to bully one of his Cent Gardes for fun, and 
 
 ip his face — still for fun — because the bullying 
 
 I to make him abandon his statue-like 
 
 attitude.' ' 
 
 Thus far the note, the absolute accuracy of 
 
 1 The author of the note is perfectly right, but he should also 
 • G ■ r.il Fabvier, who fought with Byron in Greece, 
 . ely poor and very religious. Fabvier signed the 
 ■ ghteen months before his death, and paid a lump 
 sum down. It was the cure of St. Germain l'Auxerrois who was 
 :ssful competitor "for the life-insurance hereafter," as an 
 described the arrangement.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 269 
 
 which I could prove by others in my possession 
 and from entirely different sources. A careful study 
 of these leads me to one conclusion, which I will 
 endeavour to state as briefly as possible. Of all 
 those who " had the ear" of Napoleon III., there 
 were not more than four — certainly not more than 
 half-a-dozen counsellors — who were loyally de- 
 voted to him and to his dynasty. The others 
 merely looked upon the dynasty as a stepping- 
 stone to the acquisition of enormous wealth, as 
 an instrument for the gratification of their vanity, 
 and the realisation of ambitious schemes more 
 guilty still. If the latter were unfolded here in 
 their naked truth, the revelation would raise a 
 storm of invective such as a man endowed with 
 far greater courage than mine mio;ht well wish to 
 avoid. This much I will say, come what may : 
 with the exception of Persigny, Fleury, Rouher, 
 Mocquard, Princesse Mathilde, Princesse Anna 
 Murat (Duchesse de Mouchy), and to a certain 
 extent Walewski, every man and woman at theTui- 
 leries worked for his or her own hand, and by their 
 matchless selfishness, utter absence of scruple, and 
 overweening conceit, incurred the withering con- 
 temptandscathing.but nevertheless deserved, criti- 
 cism of a section of society, the existence of which 
 is tacitly ignored in every well-ordered communit) . 
 in spite of its presence being as plain as the sun 
 on a bright summer's day. 
 
 The male counterpart of this section, consisting
 
 ; NDERCURREN i> 01 
 
 , ompany promoters of a 
 idy financiers, and the like, were more prac- 
 rhej n-ithcr indulged in profitless sneers 
 :riminations against the manieurs cCargent 
 urt, nor instituted comparisons between the 
 rand themselves. They knew that such corn- 
 ions would have been simply ridiculous. From 
 time that Mouvillon de Glimes had started his 
 "limited company" entitled Socicte Anonyme de 
 nits Chimiques, and without as much as show- 
 i printed share or prospectus, had swooped in 
 a million and a half of francs, with which he de- 
 cam; >s the Pyrenees to join the Empress's 
 mother, unmolested then or afterwards; from that 
 swindlers not affiliated to the court 
 ■ the futility of competing with those who 
 The former might be just as clever as the 
 others — in many instances they were as clever and 
 rer but the law when it overtook them had 
 itself doubly severe to dispel the sus- 
 picion attached to it of having been utterly 
 apathetic on former occasions. No one was ever 
 by this except Napoleon III. himself, 
 Ily imagined that the nation could be hood- 
 winked by the system of making the less guilty pay 
 lor the more guilty, for it finally became a system. 
 And thus it came to pass that the sovereign, 
 during the whole of his reign had been con- 
 ed in shielding the most unscrupulous, 
 and at the same time most cowardly, freebooter of
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 271 
 
 his time, lent himself to the persecution — for pro- 
 secution is too mild a term — of a comparatively 
 innocent man. I am alluding to Mires, who was 
 to Morny as John Law to the fraudulent son of a 
 banker. The latter goes on using his father's 
 name and influence to make dupes, knowing full 
 well that when the crash comes the father will 
 step in and hush the matter up at the risk of 
 being reduced to beggary himself. 
 
 That the Emperor had to do this frequently, 
 the papers found at the Tuileries after the fall of 
 the Empire leave not the smallest doubt ; that he 
 finally got tired of this incessant and enormous 
 strain on his purse there is equally no doubt. 
 One instance among many will suffice. One 
 morning there came — by appointment of course — 
 to the Emperor's private room an individual a 
 mere glance at whom revealed the prosperous, 
 irrepressible, loud-voiced and loud- mannered bras- 
 seur d affaires} His fingers and shirt-front 
 blazing with diamonds, the formidable gold chain 
 across his chest, the ample cut of his brand new 
 clothes, everything in short proclaimed the 
 prosperity to be of recent standing. He came to 
 submit to His Majesty the project of some n<\\ 
 works to be constructed in the heart of the capital. 
 The Emperor, though rarely surprised at anything, 
 was surprised this time, and could not help showing 
 
 1 Literally "a brewer of business"; the French equivalenl foi 
 
 the still more modern and more eupl 1 nglish term 
 
 " promoter."
 
 IN. LRENTS 01 
 
 I he scheme, though a vast one, 
 
 ommend itself or to distill 
 
 i hundred others ; it was on the 
 
 : it a gigantic building speculation, and 
 
 I h< Emperor as good as said 
 
 added that in any case- it was a mat 
 
 his Minister of Public Works and 
 
 If to decide, at which remark 
 
 ipplicant opened his eyes very wide. "That 
 
 trui Sire, under ordinary circum- 
 
 he began somewhat timidly, "but in 
 
 instance your Majesty has been informed 
 
 whole affair beforehand." This time it 
 
 the Emperor who opened his eyes very wide. 
 
 '■ I I en informed of nothing, Monsieur," 
 
 said. " I beg your Majesty's pardon," 
 
 stammered the applicant, "but " " I beg your 
 
 pardon, Monsieur." replied the Emperor, "but " 
 
 • M. de Morny has told your Majesty nothing ? " 
 ■ M. de Morny has told me nothing." 
 
 Thereupon the applicant, unable to contain 
 
 himself any longer, burst out, " The cheat, the 
 
 it ! And I who gave him a hundred thousand 
 
 i but two days ago, because he told me 
 
 mr Majesty had promised to support 
 
 my project!' '1 he Emperor calmly dismissed 
 
 [tor, but a few hours later there was a 
 
 stormy scene between him and Morny, or, to 
 
 absolutely correct, he enacted a stormy scene 
 
 with Morny as a spectator, for the latter remained
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 273 
 
 perfectly unmoved and simply smiled. " For two 
 twos he would have applauded as one applauds 
 a mummer at whom one laughs inwardly for over- 
 doing the thing," said the Emperor bitterly, when 
 he told the affair to Fleury. " Instead of which, 
 when I left off abusing him for sheer want of 
 breath, he quietly remarked : ' Your Majesty is 
 really too kind to worry yourself about such an 
 idiot as that. As for myself, I wash my hands of 
 him.' " 
 
 This is the synopsis of one of the innumerable 
 one-act pieces that preceded the big tragedy 
 entitled " The Campaign in Mexico," the in- 
 ception of which must have been due to some such 
 scene as the one I described just now between the 
 Emperor and Morny's dupe — though with a dif- 
 ference. Jecker, the Swiss money-monger, who 
 had lent Miramon 7,425,000 francs — or at any 
 rate nearly half that sum in bare money — was a 
 somewhat more important personage than the 
 Frenchman whom the Emperor had been obliged 
 to dismiss so unceremoniously; especially after 
 he, Jecker, had done France the honour to be 
 come naturalised and had begun to press his 
 claim of 75,000,000 francs against Mexico. 
 Morny himself, though daring enough, would not 
 have dared to wash his hands of him, and instead 
 of the play ending with the exit of Jecker from the 
 private room of Napoleon III., whither lie ma) 
 have gone not unknown to Morny, the pla) had 
 
 1
 
 N -l R( i RR] NTS 01 I HI. SE( OND I MPIRE 
 
 hed the end of its prologue. I do not 
 
 be .in absolute fact; I merely surmise, 
 
 rything connected with the initial business 
 
 War in Mexico is so enwrapped inmyster) 
 
 one must not speak with certainty. Conse- 
 
 :!\ an attempt to let in light on that subject 
 
 is well as on the subsequent events becomes 
 
 >sible .u the end of a chapter, but I will 
 
 endeavour to <U> so in the next.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 There is no doubt in my own mind that the 
 corruption of the Second Empire to which I 
 referred in the preceding chapters has led some 
 writers astray in their appreciation of the first 
 cause — or may be causes — whence sprang the 
 war in Mexico. Amidst the haze which un- 
 questionably enwraps these causes the figure 
 of the Swiss banker Jecker, with his claim for 
 75,000,000 francs against the Government of 
 Benito Juarez, seems to loom inordinately large ; 
 but a few moments of serious consideration must 
 inevitably lead to the conclusion that the huge 
 outline is due to the peculiar disposition of .1 
 light behind a comparatively small substance ; 
 in other words, that the shadow is out of all 
 proportion to the object reflected. For not 
 the most "slap-dash" leader-writer, not the 
 most theorising and dogmatic essayist, still less 
 the more evenly-balanced student oi human
 
 l ND1 RCURR1 NTS < 'I 
 
 •r .hi instant imagine that at the 
 
 ich we ha\ e arrived, 1 .ouis Napoleon 
 
 i mbarked on the Mexican campaign 
 
 • .11 than a prospective lion's share 
 
 . mdo.ooo trains. L<>uis Napoleon was 
 
 tis Philippe, constantly haunted by 
 
 dread of poverty, grudging every penny 
 
 ind always anxious to increase his 
 
 :. The man who during his eighteen years' 
 
 ign distributed two millions and a half sterling 
 
 in private charity would assuredly not have gone 
 
 for the sake of securing, let us say, a 
 
 million and a half sterling (60 per cent, of the 
 
 laim) even on the assumption that the 
 
 lid be a relatively easy one. 
 
 And yet, the note, the substance of which 
 
 ! t the end of the foregoing chapter 
 
 ribing the interview between the 
 
 •■ and one of Morny's dupes, seems to 
 
 such an illogical step. It says : " This 
 
 ynopsis of one of the innumerable one- 
 
 that preceded the big tragedy en- 
 
 Campaign in Mexico,' the inception 
 
 h must have been due to some such a 
 
 > the one I described just now." The 
 
 - the collection given to me by 
 
 M. de Maupas,and I have every reason to regard 
 
 of them as one of the best-informed 
 
 men on the Undercurrents of the Second Empire, 
 
 vl-uncles included.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 277 
 
 How did a man of that stamp make a mistake 
 of this kind ? I cannot say. When I wrote 
 that everything connected with the initial busi- 
 ness of the war in Mexico was so enwrapped in 
 mystery as to prevent one from speaking with 
 any amount of certainty, I did not purposely 
 exaggerate the difficulties in order to make my 
 attempt at elucidation more valuable. I wrote 
 what I conceived to be the truth, for in fact, I 
 feel by no means confident of the slightest amount 
 of success. Of one thing I feel, however, sure . 
 the idea that prompted the whole affair in 
 Napoleon's mind was not the wish to partici- 
 pate in the spoil of the " Jecker swindle." I have 
 a note in my grand-uncle's handwriting which 
 vaguely hints at an interview between the 
 Emperor and Jecker, which note will find its 
 due place presently. A careful perusal of its 
 contents made me write the lines at the end of 
 the ninth chapter. "Jecker, the Swiss money- 
 monger, was a somewhat more important per 
 sonage than the Frenchman (Morny. s dupe) 
 whom the Emperor had been obliged to dismiss 
 so unceremoniously. Morny himself, though 
 daring enough, would not have dared to wash 
 his hands of him, and instead of the play ending 
 with the exit of Jecker' from the private room 
 of the Emperor whither he may have gone nol un- 
 known to Morny, the play had only reached 
 the end of its prologue."
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 1 am aware there does not exist In 
 ! the (Irani. t a single instance oi an 
 ng conceived a play necessitating a 
 without having constructed that pro- 
 first, and to suspect Napoleon III. ot 
 lone the former would decidedly expose 
 If to the laughter of many people; yet 
 at tlie risk of incurring that laughter I maintain 
 Napoleon had thought out his play on the 
 subject of Mexico long before the interview with 
 (if it did take place) provided him with 
 : material for his prologue. Nay, more; 
 
 naintain that he had selected his principal in- 
 terpreter of that play long before the name ot 
 Maximilian of Austria announced the result of 
 that s.l.ction to the world at large ; and that both 
 ■ conception of the play and the selection of 
 interpreter had nothing whatsoever to do 
 with the money transactions between the banking 
 firm of Jecker and Co. and the insurgent presi- 
 of Mexico, Miramon. 
 
 who lived in France during: the late 
 
 and early sixties, and took an intelligent 
 
 in her home and foreign policy, could 
 
 but have been aware of the conflicting 
 
 arou ed in the nation itself by the 
 
 .rations for and the termination of the 
 
 '•-Austrian war. The deep-seated dynastic 
 
 opinions which even up to the present day 
 
 to divide the French were
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 279 
 
 then much stronger and consequently made the 
 chasm between the opposing parties wider than 
 it is now, and that, notwithstanding the military 
 glory and prosperity of the Second Empire. 
 
 We must remember what the heirs to the over- 
 toppled thrones and the leaders of the strangled 
 Second Republic were thirty-five years ago, and 
 what they are at this moment ; such recollection 
 renders all further comment on my part unneces- 
 sary. In spite of these divisions, there was 
 however one sentiment or a professed sentiment, 
 common to the majority of Frenchmen, viz. that 
 the temporal power of the Papacy should remain 
 intact, that a liberated Italy should not lay hands 
 on Rome, and every one felt that a free Italy 
 would do this as soon as she had the chance. 
 No one understood this sentiment of the nation 
 better than Napoleon III. himself, whether he 
 shared it is a question which, after consulting- 
 many documents on the subject, I dare not decide 
 for myself, although I am inclined to think 
 that from motives of policy, he felt disposed 
 to act upon it ; from motives of policy alone ; 
 religious convictions had absolutely nothing to 
 do with it. Madame de Stael said of Louis 
 Napoleon's uncle that he felt the need of a clergy 
 around him just as he felt the need of chamberlains, 
 to enhance the splendour of his court. It was 
 a gratuitous libel. Napoleon wanted a clergy not 
 to adorn his court but to serve his policy. II
 
 I \i»l k< URREN rS 01 
 
 ■•..• pomp had been his main objects, he 
 
 i\ e taken example from 1 [enry VIII. and 
 
 made his n<\\ Church and her clergy 
 
 imental as he pleased. By so doing he 
 
 at any rate, have reduced some of the 
 
 tility the Concordat provoked. Perhaps I may 
 
 permitted to explain. 
 
 The old noblesse would have remained irrecon- 
 
 le under any circumstances, and Napoleon 
 
 kn«w it. [f he had delivered France bound hand 
 
 and foot to the Papacy, the attitude of the Legiti- 
 
 towards himself would not have changed 
 
 jot, unless he had, at the same time, 
 
 nted to surrender himself to their mercy. 
 
 Hence he dismissed them at once from his calcu- 
 
 ns. The- hatred of the priest was the sole 
 
 tween his soldiers and what he termed 
 
 •• his enemies, the ideologues." The latter were 
 
 reason of their small number and 
 
 very nature of their ideas. The opposition 
 
 of the army was vanquished beforehand by 
 
 on <>t its absolute devotion to the person 
 
 of il ral. The bulk of the bourgeoisie 
 
 - hostile than the army to the 
 
 ind the project of their reinstatement ; the 
 
 / oltairien was, in spite of everything 
 
 been written to the contrary since, a real 
 
 not an imaginary personage at that period; 
 
 ess, he had already begun to look upon 
 
 First Con il as the sole breakwater against
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 281 
 
 another deluge in which there being no longer 
 an aristocracy to submerge, he might be swept 
 away — and he submitted. The rural populations 
 were divided between the desire to return to the 
 Church and the fear of having to restore the con- 
 fiscated lands of the clergy which they had bought 
 for a song. The Church which Bonaparte would 
 in all probability have grafted on the ineradicable 
 roots of the Roman one, if as Mme. de Stael 
 said, mere courtly display had been his object, 
 would not have differed sufficiently in dogma, 
 tenets, and ritual from the latter, to have aroused 
 the objections of the agrarian populations, among 
 whom delicate discrimination in matters theo- 
 logical does not exist and whose greed, moreover, 
 would have caused them to acquiesce in many 
 things. With regard to the dispossessed Romish 
 priesthood, formidable as they might have 
 proved, Bonaparte would have dealt with them 
 as Henry VIII. did in his time. 
 
 Or if not inclined to found a new Church. 
 Bonaparte might have let things right themselves 
 without a new Concordat, there being still 40,00c 
 parishes in the enjoyment of spiritual guidance <>!" 
 a kind, nay, having in many cases too much 
 spiritual guidance, for there were often two 
 priests to one parish ; the Constitutional one in 
 possession of the church, and the Non juror who 
 was watching to get possession and was meanvi hile 
 celebrating mass in private. I he latter I
 
 I MM RCI RREN rS 01 
 
 after rhermidor; Fructidor was more 
 ■ ital to irmer ; at any rate at the 
 
 B maparte to the First Consulate, there 
 ■ many priests of both categories in prison. 
 the prison doors to all. He might 
 n satisfied with this, and il he wanted to 
 |] more generous, might have added a subsidy 
 h in order to wound as few susceptibilities as 
 he could have disguised as the just pay- 
 ment of a debt by the State, 1 and thus created liberty 
 hip, which at no period of the history of 
 i would have been so easy to create as 
 
 : 'sonally it would have made no differ- 
 to Bonaparte what kind of form religion 
 1 ranee or how many forms of it sprang 
 istence. One might, perhaps, go still further, 
 and say that from purely conscientious motives, 
 iparte might have been content to let France 
 without religion at all. But he was of opinion 
 ligion was absolutely necessary to a nation 
 er t<> complete and supplement the effects 
 of the penal law-.. He had two maxims in this 
 that it is impossible to suppress religion ; 
 religion becomes an auxiliary of the 
 becomes a peril to it. And he who had 
 i great Mussulman chief might have 
 
 refractor had been despoiled; those who sub- 
 
 e oath were never regularly paid the ludicrous stipend 
 
 them, which a decree of 1794 suppressed altogether. 
 
 <f the latter : " they never enjoyed the benefits 
 
 •n and only preserved the opprobrium of it."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 2S3 
 
 spoken to the Egyptians ; who had addressed the 
 priesthood of Milan with the knowledge and con- 
 fidence of a theologian, was quite ready, should 
 the opportunity present itself, to enact the part of 
 a thoroughly Christian Emperor. 
 
 I have already mentioned some of the obstacles 
 which met him at the very outset. Nevertheless, 
 the official return of France to the bosom of the 
 Papacy was soon decided in his mind, for, let there 
 be no error about it, the decision was practically 
 his and his alone, as was the Concordat embodying 
 that decision. Neither Pius VII., nor his court, 
 nor Cardinal Gonzalvi, nor the Council of State, 
 nor any French statesman had a share in the 
 making of it. Bonaparte enforced its acceptance 
 by the Holy See as he imposed it on the French 
 nation, without giving either time to formulate 
 objections, for he would not and could not wait, 
 apart from the fact that his character chafed at 
 delay of any kind. " You will sign this in three 
 days ; " ran his message to Rome, just as the 
 besieger says to the besieged — " I will give you 
 four-and-twenty hours." Why did Bonaparte at 
 that early period of his power, and consequent!) 
 not sated with it, consent to part, nay insist upon 
 parting, with some of this power ? Why was he 
 so anxious to constitute the Church ol France a 
 fraction of the Universal Church when the real 
 Gallican Church would have been so easy oi 
 foundation at that moment ? There were many
 
 DERCI RREN rs 01 
 
 i w hich I will cinlcix our to show . 
 not enumerate them all. The necessity 
 n into the domain o\ pure history 
 ime apparent by-and-by ; as it is, abridg- 
 absolutely imperative. Why then did 
 iparte make the organisation of the clergy 
 ibject of a Concordat with the Pope when 
 might have made it integrally a law of 
 Empire, the possibility, nay, the proba- 
 bility of which, was then already haunting his 
 ambition. 
 
 In the first place, Bonaparte felt that a religion 
 
 truly powerful in every sense must have stood 
 
 ages. It was an analogous feeling 
 
 with regard to the potentiality of a dynasty that 
 
 made him exclaim, " Why am I not my grandson ? " 
 
 ndly, he considered that a nation shaken by 
 
 the scepticism of the XVIIIth century, as the 
 
 n< h had been, was only likely to believe in a 
 
 prophet on the condition of not being able to see 
 
 him. His compounding with Rome was to a 
 
 t a concession to the mysticism of the 
 
 . ainst which even scepticism beats 
 
 in vain, and of which mysticism he intended 
 
 Thirdly, he found himself 
 
 with two Churches inveterately hostile 
 
 .mother. Pacification by purely human 
 
 ! have re-quired time, a great deal of 
 
 and the- result would have been very un- 
 
 in then, apart from the difficulties attending
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 285 
 
 such pacification. His temper was opposed to 
 delay, even if his policy in this instance had not 
 imposed immediate action, for while waiting he 
 would have had an implacable enemy in the 
 Papacy, which enemy, moreover, he considered it 
 impossible to grapple with. Had it been an army, 
 the thing would have been different, but the two 
 hundred thousand disaffected priests, scattered all 
 over France — I am taking his own expressed 
 estimate of their number, which computation was 
 below the reality, as he subsequently hinted — were 
 not an army, but a moral force each component 
 part of which his legions would have pursued in 
 vain, and a victory over which, had they chosen to 
 gather, stand, and deliver battle, would have been 
 worse than a defeat. It was a moral force whose 
 grandeur and power increase in direct proportion 
 to the sufferings inflicted on it. Bonaparte wanted 
 no such implacable enemy within, he wanted a 
 sacred ally without. That was his main reason 
 for making the Concordat. 
 
 I need not do more than remind the reader that 
 Napoleon III., being the professed heir to his 
 uncle's universal ideas, stood particularly committed 
 to the latter's policy of conciliation towards Rome. 
 As in the case of his predecessor, the friendly 
 attitude of Napoleon III. was due, however, to 
 policy alone, and not to religious belief, and least 
 of all to admiration for the tactics of the Roman 
 clergy. The following story will plainly show this.
 
 UNDERCURRENTS O] 
 
 : t once, but it w ill bear repeating. " I 
 n wasting my breath," said the Emperoi 
 rning to my elder grand-uncle ; "1 have 
 n wasting my breath trying to prove to Sibour" 
 then Archbishop of I '.iris, who was stabbed at 
 Si I tienne-du-Mont) "that I cannot remove the 
 ;. or rather the monuments to, Jean 
 Lies and Voltaire from the Pantheon just in 
 r to please some of his flock. Truly, these 
 monuments do not contain a pinch of Rousseau's 
 or Voltaire's ashes ; this in answer to my grand- 
 < mark ; " and like you asked me, I asked 
 ur why his flock should wish the monuments 
 to be removed. But to that question I could get 
 no answer. He simply kept repeating that 'his 
 lloek felt uncomfortable in the presence of the 
 . • I ■ 
 " How did you pacify him, Sire?" asked my 
 uncle. 
 
 • I did not pacify him at all. I got out of 
 
 i- mper myself in the end, and then I exclaimed : 
 
 Look you hen-, Monseigneur, how do you think 
 
 two atheists feel in the presence of your 
 
 That settled him, and he did not say 
 
 ther word " 
 
 It is more than probable that Pius IX. himself 
 would have relished the Emperor's clever retort. 
 between the pithy epigrammatic and anti- 
 rebuke of an archbishop — even an Arch- 
 p of Paris — for having lent himself to the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 287 
 
 bigotry of his flock and the abetting of Italy to 
 deprive the Holy See of its temporality, there was 
 a wide gulf. That Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor 
 Emmanuel were contemplating that spoliation, and 
 that Napoleon III. was going to furnish them with 
 the first means, there was already as early as the 
 beginningof 1859 not the faintest doubt in the minds 
 of the Catholic hierarchy, from Pius and Antonelli 
 down to the humblest parish priest all the world 
 over. The "eldest daughter of the Church" — 
 the title France had assumed for centuries — was 
 openly accused as an accessory before the fact of 
 the intended robbery. What was worse, both 
 Napoleon III. and his nearest advisers were 
 conscious of the justness of the charge ; although, 
 as will be seen directly, the sovereign, with that 
 fatalism of his, trusted to unforeseen events, also to 
 his astuteness, to prevent the actual commission of 
 the deed. Meanwhile, to prove his unalterable 
 attachment to the Church of Rome, he let his 
 officials bungle, by proving too much. 
 
 One instance of misplaced zeal on the latter's 
 part must suffice here. It is a companion picture 
 to the gagging of M. Charles Boissiere, the ostra- 
 cism of Barrias' picture, "The Exiles of Tiberius," 
 and the attempted bribing of Lazerges to efface 
 Rochefort's portrait from his " Premiere at the 
 Odeon." 
 
 I remember as if it were to-day the 1st January 
 1859. My elder grand-uncle was confined to his
 
 I \m RCURR1 NTS 0] 
 
 I had to stop .it home to keep him 
 y . w hile his brother paid the calls pre 
 
 I i. m h SOCiet) Oil such occasions. At 
 
 ri i urn his elder brother almost mechani 
 
 put the stereotyped question to him. "Any 
 
 he asked. The other stroked his chin 
 
 I for a moment or so. " Practically 
 
 answered, "for the news is no news 
 
 it is what we expected all along; it is war." 
 
 11< then told him what had occurred at the 
 
 Tuileries between the Emperor and the Austrian 
 
 ' tassador. 
 
 It is no < ration to say that from that 
 
 lent the whole of the French Catholic clergy 
 
 up in arms, and that the relations between 
 
 . atican and the: Tuileries became very strained. 
 
 ng the eleven years that went by between 
 
 that day and the occupation of Rome by the 
 
 f Victor Emmanuel these relations never 
 
 med their former cordial footing, and 1 am 
 
 iking without authority in saying that 
 
 it these eleven years Napoleon III. 
 
 burden of this condition of things all the 
 
 itely by reason of his powerlessness to 
 
 inces foreign policy towards Eziropc which 
 
 ad inaugurated as part of his uncle's behest, 
 
 illy his policy towards Italy, which the 
 
 m for his own safety had practically forced 
 
 him, and from which, he knew full well, the 
 
 rot the Holy See had sprung and would
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 289 
 
 further spring. The reason for my having italicised 
 the five words above will soon become apparent. 
 Throughout, however, there was the wish on his 
 part not to wound the susceptibilities of the Holy- 
 See in smaller matters, not to add actual insult to 
 impending injury, while trying to delay the latter as 
 long as possible. How that wish was generally 
 interpreted by his bureaucracy it would take too 
 long for me to tell, but I promised one story ; 
 here it is. 
 
 About the middle of January, 1859, while Europe 
 was settling down to the idea of a war between 
 France and Austria in the plains of Italy during 
 the forthcoming spring, the masterpiece of the 
 greatest modern French composer was being put 
 in rehearsal at the Theatre Lyrique by Leon 
 Carvalho, the husband of the original Marguerite, 
 Caroline Miolan-Carvalho whose ashes are barely 
 cold as I write this. In spite of the many 
 changes and cuttings that had to be effected, 
 everything was proceeding satisfactorily when 
 the fiat came that the whole of " Cathedral 
 Scene " had to be suppressed. The reasons for 
 the "order" were not officially stated, but M. 
 Plance, who was entrusted with the transmission 
 of it to the manager, condescended to explain 
 that the representation of such a scene might 
 give umbrage to the Holy See. The govern- 
 mental thunderbolt came in the midst of a re- 
 hearsal, and it so happened that while M. Plance 
 
 u
 
 I NDERCl RREN is OP 
 
 to M. ( )arvalho on the stage, Mgr. 
 
 dc ur, Arch Canon of St. 1 )enis 
 
 Papal Nuncio ad interim t I believe) who 
 
 n incidentally mentioned already in these 
 
 . in connection with the Carbonaria, was 
 
 ig in a stage-box listening to the music. 
 
 l'lic prelate had been a school-fellow of Gounod, 
 
 and being passionately fond of music had ex- 
 
 ed a wish to attend the last rehearsals, though 
 
 was stone-blind. M. Carvalho took M. 
 
 Planed to him at once. " Monseigneur," he said, 
 
 order has just come from the Government to 
 
 suppress the cathedral scene as being calculated 
 
 vound people's religious feelings and give 
 
 umbrage to the Holy See. Can your 'grandeur' 
 
 formulate any objection to it?" "I?"' exclaimed 
 
 Mgr. de S£gur, " I formulate objections? Would 
 
 to Heaven there were many scenes like that 
 
 nted on the Paris stage!" And to mark 
 
 sincerity of his words, on the morning of the 
 
 premihe, he sent to Mme. Miolan-Carvalho the 
 
 ■sal which Marguerite carries in her hand at 
 
 ■ irst meeting xv j t h Faust. Mme. Carvalho 
 
 d upon it as a precious relic, nay, as some- 
 
 hing like a talisman, and would no more have 
 
 1 without it, in her famous impersonation, 
 
 than I-rederic Lemaitre would have assumed a 
 
 part without first attending mass. 
 
 story is a sample of the apprehensions 
 \ which the official entourage of the Emperor
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 291 
 
 looked upon the forthcoming war as likely to 
 affect the relations between the Papacy and 
 France. When the eventual liberation and 
 unification of Italy could no longer be a matter 
 of doubt, after the treaty of Villafranca, the 
 apprehensions became intensified a hundredfold 
 in French political and diplomatic circles, and the 
 Emperor himself was literally frightened at the 
 consequences of the fast-gathering hostility of the 
 Catholics over the civilised globe. The know- 
 ledge that practically there had been only one 
 course open to him in defence of his own life 
 and of the direct succession to his throne proved 
 no comfort to him. He felt that the whole of 
 the Catholic world would uprise against him 
 if it had not already done so, and to avert this 
 danger, provided it was not too late, to divert the 
 already threatening flood of animosity, he humbled 
 himself before the Pope as no modern ruler had 
 done before him, as no modern ruler has done 
 after him. Allowing for time, circumstances, and 
 the absence of all religious dread of excommuni- 
 cation on Napoleon III .'s part, his avowal of 
 guilt to Pius IX. reminds one of Henry IV.'s 
 (of Germany) penitential attitude before Gregory 
 VII. at Canossa. "Besides," he writes to the 
 Holy Father in January 1S6 r, 1 "after having 
 made common cause with Piedmont in a war for 
 the deliverance of Italy, it became absolutely 
 
 1 Sec the whole letter in the appendix 10 tins chap 
 
 U 2
 
 
 • ; 
 
 inst 
 rely I may 
 
 ink and paper wasted. 
 
 to be a hotbed of 
 
 or and his dynasty. 
 
 bishop of Paris, was in- 
 
 ^nation as Grand- Almoner 
 
 f the laws on foreign en- 
 
 md lower clergy openly 
 
 :>llected money for the defence 
 
 In spite of the occupation 
 
 troops, the representations 
 
 -bduction of the Mortara child 
 
 -ame haughty indifference, 
 
 resentations of the 
 
 r Pow- 3 had not the means ready 
 
 I for jpectful attention to, if 
 
 ir wishes. And yet 
 
 :amely submitted to these 
 
 stroke of his pen — i.e. by 
 
 troops from Rome — he 
 
 to the temporal sove- 
 
 5ee That is exactly what 
 
 lone in the case of 
 
 ad proved deaf to his 
 
 id to comply with his 
 
 he himself had fixed. 
 
 the uncle with regard to 
 
 - ;>m that of the nephew.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE : - 
 
 The former owed the Papacy nothing, and shortly 
 after his advent to the Consulate, the Papacy 
 became his debtor, inasmuch as he not only 
 delivered the orthodox — as distinguished from 
 the constitutional — priest rom prison, but. in 
 spite of the strenuous opposition of those around 
 him. made the Concordat, virtuallv reinstating 
 this priest in his former standing, which without 
 the Concordat he might not have recovered for 
 another decade and a half, if then. For it is 
 extremely doubtful whether the Bourbons, albeit 
 this thev had forgotten nothing and learnt no- 
 thing, would have dared to inaugurate their 
 Restoration by such a measure. On the other 
 hand, Xapoleon III. owed the Papacy a good 
 deal. It is certain that, at his first appearance 
 in the arena of politics in 1S4S. the French 
 priesthood — taking its cue from Rome, which 
 at the time chose to ignore the revolutionary 
 be^innin^s of Hortense's son. or considered those 
 beo-innin^s as buried — hailed him as the 
 
 rest rer ot order, and influenced the elections that 
 o^ave him. first, the Pres idly, the im- 
 
 perial throne. 
 
 Nevertheless ven under such condi:' ns 
 indebtedness. Xapoleon I. would have made 
 short work of the temporality 
 and of her priesthood, if either or both had s; 
 matically tried to undermine his authority, though 
 he would not have been blind to the danger at
 
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 h summary proceedings. For a 
 ,':\ of the French temperament with 
 to religious matters had made him — not 
 nchman — aware of this one important fact, 
 that the spirit of contradiction inherent in the 
 French is apt to sever them from religion when 
 they are driven to it — to make them rally to it 
 at the least attempt to detach them from it. Im- 
 perious considerations of space prevent my in- 
 sisting on the subject as I should like ; but I feel 
 certain that Xapoleon I., if placed in the position 
 of his nephew towards the Papacy, would have 
 either cut the knot that bound France towards 
 Pontifical Rome, or would have drawn that knot 
 tighter; lie- would not have allowed the ends of 
 that knot to hang down for the priesthood to 
 make a mpc of, wherewith to belabour his own 
 hack. 
 
 That spirit of decision was lacking in the 
 
 nephew, who, in fact, was the incarnation of 
 
 the spirit of indecision. It shows itself already 
 
 in the beginning of his real career — I mean 
 
 when having made up his mind as 
 
 the necessity of a coup ddat, in order not 
 
 into obscurity, he postponed the 
 
 ution of his design twice, and would have 
 
 tponed it a third time but for the strenuous 
 
 opposition of Persigny. It is the dominant 
 
 trait oi his character, nearly every act of his 
 
 private life, the whole of his policy, is marked
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 295 
 
 with it. He reminds one throughout of those 
 gamblers at Monte-Carlo who after the most 
 careful calculations suddenly fling all calculation 
 to the winds, and fling their stakes haphazard 
 on the first number that comes into their heads. 
 His marriage with Mile. Eugenie de Montijo 
 was to a great extent the upshot of this lack 
 of mental thoroughness. With the strength 
 of mind to remain single for another year or two 
 there is little doubt that Napoleon III. would 
 have secured an alliance with one of the princely 
 houses of Europe, and that the Second Empire 
 would not have come to such an abrupt and 
 ignominious end. There is no doubt that with 
 the strength of mind to deal promptly and 
 firmly with the caballing of the Papacy, the 
 idea of a Mexican Empire would have never 
 reached the experimental stage, for it may be 
 conceded at once that the idea was there some 
 considerable time before its execution received a 
 justifying sanction — in the Emperor's own mind — 
 from external causes. 
 
 Caesarism, of which Napoleon III. was the 
 heir, is fatally bound to do something. Prince 
 Albert wrote that "by depriving France of her 
 political freedom, Napoleon III. had made the 
 French the spectators of their own government," 
 Curiously enough, the French, though very 
 critical when seated in the ordinary theatre, 
 are not quite so critical at the political play-
 
 I NDERCl RUIN is OF 
 
 I the piece proceeds in a spirited 
 stirring incidents follow hard upon 
 , the) do not trouble themselves much 
 al and psychological truth of the 
 cially if their progress be mar 
 I icular display — by preference, military 
 icular display. What the stage-manaj 
 avoid above all, is long waits between 
 rhe nation which insists upon an 
 rval of twenty minutes between every act 
 at the ordinary theatre in order to repair to the 
 I cafe, will not accord a proportionately 
 interval to the stage-manager of the political 
 Nor must the house ever be shut up 
 or tl Lge business allowed to flag; there 
 
 must be an uninterrupted succession of novelties, 
 virtual suppression of the parliamentary 
 compelled Napoleon III. to look for that 
 succession of novelties outside France ; he knew 
 that the sensation pieces he was bound to produce 
 would have to be constructed on the lines of 
 ign policy. After all, Caesarism was 
 :her to blame for that state of 
 things. It had prevailed to a greater or 
 xtent during the last seventy years. It 
 ■lution, treading hard upon the 
 American War of Independence which had made 
 politics the handmaiden of home politics,, 
 which had made war the overflow tank for the 
 pint of the French nation. Napoleon I.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 297 
 
 only continued what General Bonaparte had 
 begun in the service of the Republic. " Le pli 
 etait pris," as the French themselves would say. 
 The Restoration, finding the necessity to divert 
 the public mind from home affairs as strong as 
 ever, provided that diversion in the shape of three 
 expeditions, viz., to Spain, Greece, and Algeria. 
 The Citizen Monarchy, though, perhaps less in- 
 clined to military adventures than its predecessors, 
 followed suit with the conquest of the whole of 
 Algeria, its naval expeditions, its intervention in 
 the affairs of Belgium, the East, and Spain. The 
 continuance of that showy and militant foreign 
 policy became, however, more and more difficult 
 under the Second Empire for many reasons. To 
 begin with, the want of political freedom at home 
 imposed the necessity of more frequent and 
 more brilliant diversions than those under the two 
 preceding monarchies. Secondly, the unprece- 
 dented glory attached to these diversions under 
 the First Empire had to be matched if it could 
 not be surpassed by the Second Empire, which 
 was the acknowledged heir of the first. " Sire, 
 faites grand " (Anglicc, "Sire, you must do 
 grandiose things "), exclaimed Clement Duvernois, 
 when the Empire already seemed to want to rest 
 on its military laurels in order to foster liberty at 
 home. He was but echoing the words of About, 
 which Louis Jourdan, in his " Fronticres dn 
 Rhin," and Prevost-Paradol in various pamphlets,
 
 UNDERCURREN is OF 
 
 ore him. Nearly the whole of 
 [II. 's entourage whispered or loudly 
 ime words. But France at that time 
 
 beginning to be practical. Though 
 
 military glory was always nearest to her heart — 
 any rate shared that place with greed — the 
 
 1 of annexing territories which might 
 
 I tble nutlets for her industries on the 
 
 :tive system was assuming- considerable im- 
 
 nce in her mind, for France considered her 
 
 industries seriously threatened by the policy of 
 
 i rade inaugurated by Cobden and Bright 
 
 on the one hand, and by the Emperor and Michel 
 
 Chevalier on the other. The Emperor himself 
 
 knew well enough that for the moment a militant 
 
 ign policy in Europe could give him no more 
 
 than it had already given in the way of territorial 
 
 andisement, that Nice and Savoy had to 
 
 '. itute for the time being the whole extent of 
 
 his acquisitions ; hence, the Mexican policy. 
 
 The following notes, emanating from the two 
 ■ent sources I have so often had occasion to 
 indie. ite, will throw a better light on the causes 
 that led to the Mexican campaign than any 
 lpt of mine could. Their authors had not 
 only the privilege of being frequently behind the 
 s at the Tuileries and the enviable and 
 instinctive talent of deduction, but one of them 
 late M. de Maupas' friend — was unquestion- 
 ably, as I have already shown, on intimate terms
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 299 
 
 with some of the foremost members of the Corps 
 Diplomatique. There are but two drawbacks to 
 the mass of information these notes supply ; first, 
 it is very fragmentary, consequently, it lacks 
 sequence ; secondly, the dates are wanting in nine 
 cases of every ten. This latter defect probably 
 arose from the authors' utter indifference as to the 
 ultimate fate of their jottings ; I have endeavoured 
 to remedy it by classification and condension, in 
 which, however, I was guided by the wish to give 
 a succinct account of events rather than by con- 
 siderations of chronology. I may be permitted to 
 remark that this obvious indifference of the authors 
 lends additional value to their evidence, for it 
 renders their good faith above suspicion. They 
 may have erred in their appreciation ; the authen- 
 ticity of the facts themselves is beyond dispute. 
 The uniformity of style — some people might say 
 the want of style — of these notes is due to me. 
 As usual I have had to abbreviate and correct 
 many of those that were in English, the French 
 ones I have had to translate. 
 
 " There is to be more military glory and more 
 marching at the head of civilisation." Thus runs 
 one of my English notes, evidently written at the 
 very outset of the affair. " There is to be more 
 military glory and more marching," it says a 
 second time. " The military glory is almost a 
 foregone conclusion, and there will be plenty of 
 room for marching and even for countermarching
 
 I NDERCURR] NTS 01 
 
 :ico ; it remains to be 
 I may not prove a bit too vast to 
 by the wheels of gun-carriages instead 
 h for the reception of the seed of that 
 : it is questionable whether bayonets are 
 nt implements to 'set' seed with, 
 il ^\ civilisation. I have got an idea 
 the causes for this anxiety to march at 
 id of civilisation through the erstwhile Em- 
 ima is jealousy of the growing influ- 
 States in that quarter and the 
 ilidation of republican principles 
 which would result from that influence. In spite 
 sympathy with those principles supposed 
 lormant in Louis Napoleon's breast, he 
 s not like them practically any more than his 
 unci' it that some of the coins of the latter's 
 
 ear the words 'Empire et Republique.' 
 r, if there be jealousy in the mind of the 
 Emperor with regard to the United States, the 
 lo not appear to be altogether free 
 an analogous sentiment with regard to him. 
 public men have had, as it were, a prophetic 
 of antagonism against him for years, in 
 since his very accession to the throne 
 which feeling, perhaps, showed itself against their 
 in such matters, for instance, in their luke- 
 warm participation in the Exposition of 1855. 
 ararmness was, if not resented, at least 
 tted by the new Emperor, who especially at
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 301 
 
 that period was never tired of proclaiming his 
 admiration of, and his cordial friendship for, the 
 United States, and who expected, perhaps, a re- 
 turn of the compliment. He not only did not get 
 that, but President Buchanan sounded a distinct 
 warning against him and his probable policy with 
 regard to Mexico as early as two years ago. 1 
 The feeling of displeasure on the Emperor's part 
 was probably heightened by the curious coin- 
 cidence that President Buchanan had given 
 umbrage to Napoleon III. before. 2 The dis- 
 turbed condition of the Union's home affairs is 
 not the absolute reason for Napoleon's taking 
 action in the matter just now, but it is one 
 of them. He knows perfectly well that in 
 1857 the United States did not send their re- 
 presentative to Zuluaga but to Juarez, because 
 the erstwhile Oaxaka lawyer is a man after their 
 own heart. And it would appear that President 
 Lincoln thinks as much of him as did his prede- 
 cessor. I have all this on very good authority, not 
 from one source but from at least half-a-dozen. 
 President Lincoln has, however, his hands very full, 
 and the Emperor thinks that Lincoln's poison 
 may prove Napoleon's meat ; for from all I hear, 
 
 1 Buchanan's speech in Congress, 1859. 
 
 2 Then follows the story of Mr. Buchanan's conversation with 
 the Emperor at the French Embassy in London in 1855, related in 
 a previous note by the same author, both which note and itorj I 
 used in Chapter V. The repetition is, to my mind, another prooi 
 that the notes were never intended for publication.
 
 [ NDERCURREN rs 0] 
 
 absolutely working J or his own 
 | if all I hear 1 e true, for his own hand 
 
 note does not end here, but I am obliged 
 interrupt its transcription to make room for one 
 my younger grand-uncle's handwriting, which 
 affords, .is it were, a kind of explanation of 
 the last sentence of the other. The italics of that 
 itence are not mine, and I may also be allowed 
 state that it my surmises with regard to the 
 identity of the writer of the notes given to me by 
 M. de Maupas be correct, as I have every reason 
 they are, the two men whose information 
 I print, that is, my younger grand-uncle on the one 
 side and the English nobleman on the other, were 
 never even on speaking terms with one another. 
 Their social standing and their tastes were too 
 wide aj »art. They may have met in society, and 
 the name of the Englishman was a household 
 ■ nl among the Parisians of that day, in the 
 that the name of the Due de Gramont- 
 a little later on, but I feel certain 
 that they never held any communication. The 
 similarity of opinion expressed in these notes is 
 thi apparently all the more striking, not 
 
 in reality though, when we remember that both 
 writers were behind the same scenes. The note of 
 my uncle, I should say, is of a somewhat later 
 <\w 
 
 • The English are really not showing their
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 303 
 
 usual and admirable common sense in their criti- 
 cisms on the Campaign in Mexico. A few weeks 
 ago Lord Montagu" (Lord Montague?) "gave a 
 statesmanlike account of the 'Jecker claim' in 
 the House of Commons. He told his listeners 
 how Jecker had sold an enormous portion of the 
 shares of his loan to the then French Minister in 
 Mexico, M. de Gabriac, how the latter had sold 
 them to others until they finally came into the 
 hands of Morny, who, according to his Lordship, 
 bought still more from various holders, and 
 also induced a still higher-placed personage — by 
 which, of course, he meant the Empress — to 
 participate in the purchase. The English noble- 
 man is unquestionably a capital speaker, and 
 marshals his real or supposed facts with great 
 ability, but his absolute ignorance of the character 
 of the Emperor, Empress, Morny, and the 
 rest of the foremost personages at Court, 
 has led him into one or two most amusing 
 blunders, besides deluding him and his country- 
 men into the belief that the recovery of the 
 Jecker claim was the main object of the expe- 
 dition to Mexico in the Emperor's mind. The 
 idea of Morny's disbursing money for such things 
 as the Jecker bonds is too ridiculous for words, 
 and the thought of the Empress acting upon any 
 suggestion from Morny in that or any other 
 matter is if anything still more ridiculous. These 
 bonds were never sold by Jecker to Gabriac ;
 
 1 R( i KKIA IS OF 
 
 in Inker's possession now, 
 Ji tl rtainly an understanding be 
 
 and Morny that the latter shall have 
 le number of them the moment they 
 ible of being realised even at a tre- 
 int. Why, when Jecker became 
 rupt about two years ago over 68 millions 
 ; oi these bonds, out of 75 millions 
 1, were found among his assets. I have 
 ellent authority, namely, on that of 
 a Jam- Rothschild, who told me at 
 
 time. It is pretty well known here that 
 Mr. Mathews, the English Consul in Mexico, 
 word to Lord Russell that Benito Juarez 
 tot even the comparatively small sum where- 
 with to send La Fuente to Europe, though it is 
 equally well known that Abraham Lincoln, not- 
 withstanding his own difficult position just now, 
 hi 1 filled his secret promise to the real 
 of Mexico's independence to send 
 him money, arms, and, if possible, volunteers. 
 Juarez is scrupulously honest, and with 
 idies: received he no doubt dis- 
 his most pressing liabilities, and left 
 himself almost penniless. Not only are the 
 nal re of Juarez and his adherents 
 
 practically exhausted, but the country itself is in 
 a similar sad plight. The report has just reached 
 that the capital had not even sufficient funds 
 • the decorations and triumphal arches on the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 305 
 
 occasion of the entry of the French troops, and 
 that M. Martin Daran, a banker in that city 
 advanced 40,000 francs for the purpose. One 
 can scarcely imagine the Emperor to be ignorant 
 of these reports, and yet it is assumed by a promi- 
 nent member of the English parliament, and 
 probably by others also, that in order to press the 
 Jecker claim more forcibly, the Emperor continues 
 his occupation, for there is scarcely any contention 
 about the purely French claim, though the Emperor 
 for reasons of his own would scarcely admit this. 
 " The English Government informed Lord 
 Cowley about five months ago that in a conversa- 
 tion with the French Ambassador Lord Russell 
 had given the latter to understand that if the 
 French would completely abandon the Jecker 
 claim, her Majesty's Minister would support the 
 purely French claim, though not for the amount 
 claimed. I wonder whether Lord Russell is 
 aware that the Comte de Flahaut, the French 
 Ambassador in question, is the father of Morny, 
 that Morny has been mainly instrumental in procur- 
 ing the appointment of Dubois de Saligny as 
 French Ambassador in Mexico in succession to the 
 Comte de Gabriac, and that Dubois de Saligny 
 who aroused all the ill-feeling of the Mexicans 
 or rather of the Juarists — although the terms seem 
 almost to be synonymous — against the French 
 in order to report that ill-feeling to his Govern- 
 ment, has boasted to one of the Civil Commis- 
 
 x
 
 UNDERCI RREN is OF 
 
 f the armyof occupation that his (Saligny's) 
 
 : consisted in having foreseen the 
 
 ition of the Emperor to intervene in the affairs 
 
 ind to ha\ e rendered such interven- 
 
 iolutely necessary.' All these doings and 
 
 irded in private letters from Mexico, 
 
 Lte letters which would be useful indeed to 
 
 : the European statesmen who seem to be 
 
 stone-blind with regard to the real motives and 
 
 intentions of the Emperor. 
 
 ■ For the support thus generously offered by 
 I ind is the very thing the Emperor does not 
 want. It would smooth the money difficulties 
 between Juarez and himself, and would at once 
 >v the pretext for a protracted occupation. 
 claim, as being less likely of settlement, 
 i pretext more difficult to destroy, and 
 that is where Jecker will probably score and 
 Morny pocket his ill-gotten gains. Let it not be 
 thought for one moment that the Emperor has 
 Lin test sympathy with Jecker as the creditor 
 of the Mexican Government or erstwhile Govern- 
 ment. He is as firmly convinced of the iniquity 
 of the claim, and that apart from the amount, as 
 all those must be who have given the matter the 
 slightest attention. But he saw in it at once the 
 opportunity for which he had been looking at least 
 thr< - that is, ever since it became patent 
 
 to him that the war with Austria for the liberation 
 Italy, now that it had been successful, would
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 307 
 
 inevitably lead to complications with the Holy 
 See. For the wish to regain, if possible, the good 
 graces of the Vatican is another factor in the 
 Mexican Campaign, and a much more powerful 
 one than the recovery of the money Mexico owes 
 to France. It must be remembered that the 
 Liberals, the partisans of Juarez, have confiscated 
 the lands and property of the clergy, which pro- 
 perty, if realised, would assume almost fabulous 
 proportions. Unfortunately for the real inde- 
 pendence of Mexico this realisation is at present 
 impossible. In the disturbed state of the country 
 no foreigner would invest, and the Mexican higher 
 clergy have already threatened the Mexicans born 
 with major excommunication if they bought the 
 tiniest plot of this property or paid rent for it. 
 General La Forey has already had to interfere in 
 this respect. 
 
 " At the first blush nothing seemed easier for 
 the Emperor than to have made France's claim 
 against Mexico the basis for an intervention, 
 although — and I am absolutely certain of what 
 I say — the whole debt with regard to money 
 lent at the beginning of the intervention scarcely 
 exceded a million of francs. The rest had been 
 incorporated into the Jecker loan which 'giving 
 new bonds for old ones' had nominally made 
 Jecker and Company, the chief creditor of 
 Mexico. The whole of the French claims other 
 than for money lent, even if every claim had 
 
 x 2
 
 i NDERCURREN l> OF 
 1, would not have exceeded another 
 
 million. The latter is the claim which in the 
 of the ultimatum at Soledad has been 
 nified into sixty millions francs for damages 
 and losses sustained by French subjects up to 
 July [862. The ultimatum did well to insist 
 that the claim had to be acknowledged by Mexico, 
 without discussion on her part and without 
 I r nee furnishing particulars. Monstrous as 
 this may appear in the light of the comity of 
 ns, it is still more monstrous in view of the 
 following fact, tor the authenticity of which I can 
 vouch. Alter the bombardment of Sant-Jean 
 d'Ulloa < 1 S s S K the French had their claims 
 d to the amount of three millions of francs, 
 a million of which remained after a careful 
 examination of the claims by the French Govern- 
 ment itself. That million was afterwards divided 
 by the French Government among the necessitous 
 nchmen in Mexico. 
 " France, therefore, has not fared badly either 
 at the hands of Juarez or at those of his pre- 
 essors. Nevertheless, as I said just now 
 much as a claim, which upon conscientious 
 examination would not have amounted to two 
 millions (including money lent), was magnified 
 into one of sixty, the Emperor might as well 
 • ken that one as the redemption of the 
 Jecker bonds for the basis of his intervention, 
 with the additional prospect of having a more
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 309 
 
 ungrudging material support from England, and 
 a moral one from the rest of the powers. 
 
 " But this would have been altogether at 
 variance with his temper. That spirit of in- 
 decision of his, that tendency to have any number 
 of strings to his bow, in reference to various 
 and often conflicting ends, that spirit and ten- 
 dency which to a great extent, though not 
 wholly, had remained in abeyance in the be- 
 ginning of his reign, has recently assumed the 
 upper hand. The Emperor likes to suspend 
 his decision about any and everything until the 
 last moment, and after having weighed the for 
 and against of a scheme for ever so long, 
 he ends up by taking a sudden but entirely 
 unforeseen resolution. The resolution to make 
 the Jecker bonds the pretext for the expedition 
 was of this kind, and surprised no one so much 
 as Jecker himself who had certainly no such 
 hopes when he applied to the Emperor, as so 
 many dupes of Morny had done before him, as 
 many are likely to do after him. Far from 
 disbursing money for Jecker bonds, which at that 
 time were practically worthless, Morny must have 
 had a pretty lump sum from Jecker on the 
 promise of interesting the Emperor on his behalf. 
 There was, moreover, a correspondence very 
 compromising to the natural brother of the 
 Emperor. The sum Morny had received was 
 too considerable to be refunded by the Emperor —
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 people si\ it was a million and a half of francs — 
 and Morn) had not taken a step towards re- 
 deeming his promise. Jecker on the other hand, 
 positively refused to part with the correspondence, 
 nay, threatened to publish it unless that sum was 
 refunded ; and as Jecker was not naturalized then, 
 consequently not a Frenchman, the usual means 
 for gagging him, or for that matter, for suppressing 
 him altogether, resorted to by the Prefecture of 
 Police were not available. 
 
 "It is doubtful whether the Emperor would 
 have resorted to them if they had been available. 
 He jumped at the redemption of the Jecker 
 bonds as a valid pretext for intervention, though 
 he had for some time quite as valid a pretext in 
 his own hands, but that one absolved him from 
 the necessity of disbursing a million and a 
 half of francs in order to avoid a fearful scandal 
 in connection with his half-brother and the 
 President of the Corps Legislatif. For I repeat 
 again and again, the redemption of the Jecker 
 bonds is a pretext, just as the offer of the crown 
 ol Mexico to Maximilian of Austria is a sham. I 
 may not live to see this, but if the expedition be 
 successful and Maximilian elevated to the throne, 
 he may remain there for his lifetime, if for so long, 
 but the succession will devolve upon Napoleon's 
 heirs ; for what the Emperor has really in his 
 mind is a great empire in America for the French, 
 just as there is a great empire in India for the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 311 
 
 English. If the thought had been seriously 
 entertained to found a stable empire for any one 
 but Napoleon III. and his heirs, Napoleon III. 
 would not have selected a childless prince and 
 that after five years of marriage. There is 
 another end the Emperor has in view by this 
 selection, the reconciliation with the Holy 
 See. Maximilian is a staunch Catholic, and 
 the Mexican higher clergy, the most corrupt 
 in the world, will regain their influence under him. 
 It will be a set-off against the probable loss by 
 Pius IX. of his temporal sovereignty. If that fails, 
 Napoleon III. will think out something else to 
 conciliate the Vatican." 1 
 
 1 My uncle was right, the Convention of 1864 between Italy and 
 France was " the other thinsr."
 
 APPENDIX TO PART X 
 
 11 ill R l ROM NAPOLEON III. TO PIUS IX 
 
 January % 1861. 
 
 \'i ry H< ily Father, 
 
 The letter of your Holiness, dated December 25, 
 Is me the opportunity of making known the whole 
 of my thoughts. I have always considered the good 
 understanding between sovereigns and the head of 
 "ii as indispensable to the happiness of peoples, for 
 when that understanding is there, everything may be 
 ithed, and the questions of self-love and strict right 
 an amicable entente and reciprocal con- 
 ns. But when unfortunate circumstances have 
 bred defiance and almost hostility between powers 
 created by the Almighty to live in concord, everything 
 becomes difficult. The slightest divergences are apt to 
 crate into serious embarrassments and into inces- 
 sant causes of antagonism. The signal proof of this 
 may be found in the occurrences of the last eighteen 
 months. 
 
 '1 lie moment that events, discounted eagerly by various 
 parties in their own interests, have made a doubt possible 
 ;r I [oliness's mind with regard to my sentiments, the 
 former harmony had to make room for a spirit of defi- 
 ance, and in Rome as in Paris everything that comes 
 from one of these two countries is viewed with suspicion 
 in the other. 
 
 Nevertheless amidst the embarrassment created by
 
 APPENDIX 313 
 
 grave conjunctures, my conduct has always been clear in 
 its acts, pure in its intentions. 
 
 When, nearly two years ago, I started for the Italian 
 War, I declared to your Holiness that I undertook that 
 war with two sentiments deeply rooted in my heart ; the 
 independence of Italy and the maintenance of the tem- 
 poral authority of the Holy Father ; that I cherished no 
 illusions as to the difficulty of reconciling the interests of 
 those causes ; that I would use my utmost endeavours to 
 succeed in that task. I have remained faithful to this 
 promise as far as the interests of France did allow me. 
 The facts speak for themselves. 
 
 At the Peace of Villafranca I wished the Pope to be at 
 the head of the Italian Confederation, in order to enhance 
 the Holy Father's power and moral influence. When 
 the revolution began to develop itself contrary to my 
 desires, I proposed to the Catholic Powers to guarantee 
 to the Holy Father the remainder of his states. Though 
 Rome became the centre where all the enemies of my 
 government foregathered, I nevertheless maintained my 
 troops in Rome. When the personal safety of your 
 Holiness became more and more precarious, I increased 
 the strength of the army of occupation. 
 
 I may well ask how my conduct has been appreciated ? 
 I have been pointed at as the adversary of the Holy 
 See ; the minds of the most exalted members of the 
 French clergy have been poisoned against me ; they have 
 gone as far as to solicit the Archbishop of Paris to tender 
 his resignation as Grand-Almoner of France ; there was 
 an attempt to convert the bishops and their subordinates 
 into a foreign administration, recruiting men and collect- 
 ing money in contravention of the laws of the land. In 
 short, Rome has been made a hot-bed of conspiracy 
 against my government and yet I have authorised the 
 man who had most openly enacted the partisan of the 
 Republic to become the head of the I [oly Father's Army 
 (Lamoriciere).
 
 \rn NDIX 
 
 any hostile demonstrations have nol 
 e m y line of conduct. 1 have done 
 [ , . to maintain the authority of the Pope 
 ing the interests of France. Never 
 ih.a I have not done enough. I can 
 • md this, but I can only make answer as 
 In spite of my just veneration for the head of 
 hurch, my troops, unless the honour of France her- 
 • stake, will never become instruments of 
 i of foreign nations. And besides, after 
 having fought by the side of Piedmont for the 
 i" Italy, it became absolutely impossible 
 me the next day, as it were, to turn my arms 
 -t it. no matter how severely I may blame its 
 i1 ns. 
 In the actual condition of things I regret deeply that 
 are no longer animated by that spirit of 
 conciliation which would have enabled me to accept the 
 of your Holiness. If your Holiness will 
 mmend the Archbishop of Paris to continue his 
 function-. I have no doubt that this prelate so praise- 
 hy in many other things, will submit to your 
 s will. If, however, he insists on retiring, I will 
 the bishops for the one who appears to 
 me most fit to fulfil the religious requirements and the 
 ical conventions. 
 I sincerely trust that the feelings of uneasiness and 
 uncertainty in which we move will soon come to an end, 
 heir cessation I may enjoy once more the 
 your Holiness's confidence and friendship. 
 
 Napol£on.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " A few nights ago there was a scene at 
 the Tuileries more dramatic, perhaps, than 
 any scene in that most powerful of Alexandre 
 Dumas' melodramas, Henri III. et sa Cour. 
 The chateau was wrapt in silence, for the 
 Empress is away in England or Scotland, 
 and the Emperor was sitting in his own room 
 deeply engrossed with the second volume of 
 V Histoire de Jules Ce'sar, which is just out. 
 Suddenly, one of the gentlemen-in-waiting, the 
 Marquis de Caux, I believe, enters the Em- 
 peror's room ; but the Emperor pays no attention, 
 he scarcely looks up. ' What is it ? ' he asks 
 almost impatiently. ' The Prince de Metternich, 
 sire,' is the answer. The Emperor half rises 
 from his chair and turns very pale as if with a 
 presentiment of disaster, and before the Ambassa- 
 dor is fairly in the room, the presentiment is 
 verified. ' I am sorry to inform your Majesty
 
 I] Kt l RRENTS 0] 
 
 the battle ol Sadowa, which was fought 
 
 has been lost by us.' he says, remain- 
 
 i aim than the Emperor himself. In 
 
 another moment several horses, which arc always 
 
 kept ready harnessed at night, were put in, and 
 
 her, Fleury, Drouyn de Lhuys, and Randon 
 
 sent for. Hie Master of the Horse and the 
 
 Minister for War reached the Tuileries within 
 
 cond of each other. The Emperor, who is 
 
 phlegmatic enough at ordinary times, invariably 
 
 i that phlegm in Fleury's presence. 'We 
 
 lined Venice for others, we have lost 
 
 Rhin< for ourselves! 1 he exclaimed, before 
 
 the door had been fairly closely behind his most 
 
 trust\- adviser, handing him at the same time the 
 
 jam announcing the Austrian defeat. 'We 
 
 lost nothing yet, sire,' remarked Fleury 
 
 \ at the paper. ' On the contrary ; now 
 
 or never is your chance to reconstruct the map 
 
 Europe.' The sentence had barely left his 
 
 lips when the door opened once more to admit 
 
 Randon. He had heard what Fleury said. 
 
 'We are not ready,' he remarked, addressing 
 
 Fleury directly and summarily saluting the 
 
 Then turning to his sovereign, 'Your 
 
 is well aware that I have not got 
 
 thirty thousand troops fit to take the field at such 
 
 short notia 'Thirty thousand troops!' re- 
 
 i Fleury with his usual dash; ' thirty 
 
 and troops! That's more than sufficient to
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 3 i 7 
 
 mask the absence of those that are not ready.' 
 The Emperor shook his head. His eternal 
 want of decision at the critical moment came 
 strong upon him. ' Ah,' he sighed, ' if the 
 Empress were but here.' For once in a way 
 I agree with him ; if the Empress had been 
 there, she would have counselled a headlong 
 war with Prussia there and then, and I fancy 
 it would have been the right thing to do. In 
 three months, in six months, in a year, or a 
 couple of years — for that struggle must inevit- 
 ably come now — it will be too late. Nay, 
 the longer it is delayed the worse it will be for 
 France in the end, for those who know best 
 aver that Prussia is gaining strength every day. 
 Sadowa has effaced the glory of Solferino, 
 Prussia has proved her single-handed superiority 
 over Austria in Bohemia, just as France proved 
 it seven years ago in Lombardy. If anything, 
 the proof is in favour of King Wilhelm's legions, 
 for Victor Emmanuel's troops did, after all, count 
 for something. Practically, though, the two 
 nations stand confessed equal on the battle- 
 field with regard to one adversary, and that 
 one, the military power hitherto deemed too 
 strong for attack by her latest victor who for 
 years submitted to great humiliations at her 
 hands. 
 
 " Unless I am greatly mistaken in the temper 
 of the French, they will not relish that real or
 
 UNDERCURREN rS I M 
 
 ■ 1 equalit) ; it will rankle in their minds and 
 
 will hold Napoleon III. directly responsible 
 rhere, I feel, lies the rock ahead. The 
 nchwill not be satisfied until they have proved 
 to the world at large that Jena and not Leipzig or 
 Waterloo was the test of their military supremacy 
 over Prussia. They will not rest until they have 
 tried conclusions with the descendants of the 
 armi< I rederic the Great once more, and that 
 
 rather than the prospect of the acquisition of 
 territory on the hanks of the Rhine will be the real 
 the next contest between them and the 
 ton. I feel convinced that no diplomatic skill 
 will avert this contest, unless Prussia would sub- 
 mit to the most extravagant demands on the part 
 Sadowa, to my mind, has put an end 
 to the probability of such concessions, if ever they 
 
 seriously entertained by King Wilhelm, since 
 he has had two such men as Helmuth von Moltke 
 and Otto von Bismarck by his side. 
 
 " I like and admire Napoleon III. as much as 
 any man. but I am not blind to the fact that it 
 would want a Richelieu and a Jomini toco-operate 
 with him in order to withstand successfully the 
 combination arrayed against him. There is not 
 a Metternich or a Talleyrand in the whole of 
 France, still less a Richelieu ; if there be a Jomini, 
 
 carefully kept away from the Court by the 
 dancing and swaggering clique who maintain that 
 le courage fait tout. And worse than all, Bazaine
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 319 
 
 is in Mexico. I am told by those who are com- 
 petent to express an opinion, that he and Niel 
 are the only two among the marshals who can lay 
 claim to the name of strategists in the serious 
 acceptation of the term ; although those same 
 informants do not hesitate to aver that there are 
 at least half-a-dozen officers of lesser grades that 
 are superior to both. The competent ones are, 
 however, systematically ostracised by the Court 
 party, which though devoured by jealousy of one 
 another does not even condescend to be jealous 
 of these. They are simply ignored. The jealousy, 
 intriguing, and caballing are reserved for those 
 who cannot be ignored ; the result of all this is an 
 all-pervading spirit of meanness which it would be 
 impossible to describe and still more impossible 
 to impress upon the outsider but for some startling 
 proofs in individual instances. A lawyer would 
 call them pieces de conviction morales. 
 
 " Here is one among many. When Bazaine 
 was raised to the marshalship a little less than two 
 years ago, not one of the marshals of France (with 
 the exception of Randon, the Minister for War) 
 sent him his congratulations. 
 
 " Some time after the fall of Sebastopol, its 
 eminent defender paid a visit to France and met 
 with a distinguished welcome at the Tuileries. 
 When taking leave of the Emperor, he mentioned 
 casually that on his way home he was going to 
 spend a day at the camp of Chalons to see
 
 I NDERCURREN rS 01 
 
 ral Raoult, the chief of the staff. Noticing 
 look of surprise on the Emperor's lace, 
 Kplained, ' During the late war, sire, 
 ral Raoult was m\ most formidable adver 
 It w.mtrd a foreign general to draw the 
 attention to an officer of his army 
 attainments were common talk in every 
 war-office of Europe except that of France her- 
 self, an officer whom Queen Victoria had delighted 
 t< - h< incur l>v conferring upon him the Order of the 
 Bath, w ho bore the insignia of the Medidje, of Saint 
 Maurice and Saint Lazare, the military medals 
 of Sardinia and England, who during the siege 
 itself was made a Knight-Commander of the 
 ion of Honour. Just, nay, generous to a 
 fault, the Emperor repaired his oversight in a 
 little while by naming General Raoult chief of 
 the staff of the Imperial Guards. 1 
 
 " 1 )id the Emperor point out afterwards to his 
 Minister for War that it is his most sacred duty 
 to enlighten him on the merits of his officers ? It 
 is more than doubtful, for there is nothine Na- 
 poleon III. dislikes so much as being compelled 
 primand. He generally errs the other way. 
 He endeavours as far as lies in his power, to 
 ignorance and incompetence from their 
 
 ilt was mortally wounded at Reichshofen, and 
 
 three weeks later at the castle of that name. His surrender 
 
 on the battle-field to von der Tann, who had been his comrade-in- 
 
 :, Africa, would, if fully narrated, make one of the most 
 
 dramatic stories of the Franco-German War.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 321 
 
 active spheres, but his method is, to say the least, 
 curious. General Forey, who wasted many months 
 in Mexico, and showed a lamentable want of de- 
 cision and an utter absence of military skill before 
 Puebla, had to be recalled. The merest sub- 
 lieutenant could have pointed out the flagrant 
 mistakes he had committed. The Emperor could 
 think of no better way of removing him from his 
 command than by making him a marshal. Here 
 is an extract from the Emperor's letter dated 
 exactly three years ago, which Forey has been 
 showing everywhere. ' It has afforded me much 
 happiness to hear of the entry of my troops 
 into Mexico ; and now I think that all serious 
 resistance will be at an end. By the time my 
 letter reaches you, Mexico will have been in 
 our power for three months, and the military ex- 
 pedition may be considered as terminated. Under 
 these circumstances, I think it useless to prolong 
 your stay in Mexico. A marshal of France is 
 too big a personage to be allowed to worry about 
 intrigues and administrative details. Hence you 
 have my authority to delegate your powers to 
 General Bazaine the moment you think fit, and to 
 return to France to enjoy your success and the 
 legitimate glory you have won.' 
 
 "Of course, the non-recall of Bazaine when he 
 was raised to the dignity of marshal is explained 
 by Forey's friends on the plausible theory that 
 since then, affairs in Mexico have gone from bad 
 
 Y
 
 UNDERCI KK1.N rS OF 
 
 ( but I and man) like me who are neither 
 . friends nor Forey's enemies know the 
 i »f calibre between these two. 
 \n>l then that magnificent sentence ' A 
 . ii of France is too big a personage to be 
 ,1 to worry about intrigues and administra- 
 details.' Ye shades of Davoust and Ney, 
 worried themselves, without being asked, 
 about the soldiers' tin kettles and the washing of 
 their feet. And Bismarck, as big a personage as 
 any marshal of France, and who, Korner 1 told 
 me yesterday, worried himself in the thick of the 
 campaign about his soldiers' cigars, and made his 
 wife worry too, while he, Bismarck, was sleeping 
 on the flagstones. The present marshals are too 
 for that sort of thing, they do not care a single 
 jot about the soldier's camp kettle, or about his 
 The general of division takes his 
 from the marshal, the general of brigade 
 5 his cue from the general of division, and so 
 on, until in the end the barrack-room becomes an 
 unspeakable thing, and the soldier, in spite of his 
 outward smartness, a far from pleasant being to 
 te into close contact with. Of course, as to 
 th<- soldier himself, there are exceptions, and 
 notably among the older ones ; but of the younger 
 the least said the better. Cleanliness is not the 
 tting sin of the urban and rural lower-middle 
 
 ■ old I '•< unan gentleman to whom I have already 
 red to in the first of these papers.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 323 
 
 classes, from which the bulk of the army is 
 recruited, ' In barracks cleanliness is simply a 
 shifting of dirt from one corner to another,' said 
 a meritorious young officer to me when discussing 
 the subject. ' One may have as many inspections 
 as there are days in the year,' he went on ; ' but 
 one will never succeed in teaching cleanliness — I 
 mean real cleanliness — to a peasant lad who has no 
 desire to be cleanly. What he will do is this : 
 He will call to his aid all his astuteness, which is 
 great, to shift the evil whenever the surveillance 
 of his chiefs shall compel such shifting. That is 
 the utmost one can accomplish under conditions 
 of the strictest supervision. The evil is dear to 
 him. A liking for and the habit of cleanliness 
 are easily acquired, seeing that sailors and old 
 soldiers are almost faultless in this respect ; but 
 this material transformation requires time for its 
 accomplishment, inasmuch as it corresponds in 
 reality to a moral transformation. It is just as 
 difficult to compel a young soldier to be spick 
 and span from top to toe as to compel an old 
 soldier not to be. And by spick and span, I mean 
 wholesome throughout. This, under conditions of 
 the strictest supervision ; I leave you to imagine 
 what the result will be if these conditions are re- 
 laxed in the slightest degree. You are aware that 
 the Cent Gardes before going on duty are com 
 pelled to take a bath, in case of accidents. This 
 will give you an idea of the state of affairs in 
 
 Y 2
 
 I NDERI URREN l> I »i 
 
 other regiments where no such regulations 
 /ail.' 
 
 "Practically, my young informant told me 
 nothing new, but it is as well to have one's own 
 opinions confirmed now and again by those whose 
 knowledge is derived from daily experience. 
 These, then, arc the hygienic conditions of an 
 army which, unless a miraculous change in the 
 temper of the nation be wrought, will be called 
 upon sooner or later to confront the Prussians, 
 whose marvellous military progress is best shown 
 in the bitter defeat they have just inflicted on 
 those whom sixteen years ago they dared not 
 in battle. As for the intellectual regime, 
 one little story will suffice to show that it is still 
 more deplorable than the hygienic. The thing 
 happened at Saumur, the admission to which is 
 at any rate hedged round by a preliminary exam- 
 ination. On the face of it, therefore, the cadets 
 would seem entitled to a wider latitude in the 
 interpretation of their manuals than a mere 
 Iboy or lad from the plough. Not at all, 
 unless they can repeat word for word the contents 
 of their theoretical handbooks, they are considered 
 so many failures. Absolute literalness is required 
 of them. As long as they can stand this test, 
 their fitness for a sub-lieutenancy at the end of 
 their two years' term is not questioned. Lately 
 an inspector-general (read an examiner) asked 
 a young fellow at his final 'go' if he knew his
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 325 
 
 'theory.' The latter modestly answered in the 
 affirmative. ' Then please to tell me which is 
 the word that occurs only once in the Cavalry 
 Manual.' As a matter of course the cadet was at a 
 loss. ' Well, you see, you do not know your 
 theory. The word that occurs only once in the 
 whole of the manual is nonobstant? " l 
 
 The above note or notes — for from internal 
 evidence I came to the conclusion long ago that 
 the whole was not written at one sitting — belong 
 to the collection from which I have so often drawn 
 in these chapters. But the impartiality of the 
 mere chronicler of facts, which is an essential 
 feature of the majority of the others, appears to 
 be gone. The writer — my younger granduncle in 
 this instance — was evidently yielding to a bitter 
 feeling of resentment against the army, and from 
 personal experience I can state that that feeling 
 was shared by hundreds among the higher edu- 
 cated classes. They instinctively felt the error 
 that had been committed by Napoleon III. 
 allowing Prussia to make good her claim to 
 hegemony in Germany at the expense of Austria. 
 Even those whose political acumen was of the 
 slightest became alive to the fact that the events 
 
 1 The word " nonobstant," the absolute English equivalent for 
 which is "notwithstanding," has almost entirely disappeared from 
 the French language, and been replaced by "malgreY' "nranmoins," 
 &c, &c. Nowadays it is only used by the comic writers who 
 interlard it freely in the speeches of a martinet officer or an ignorant 
 and would-be pedantic non-com.
 
 I NDERCURR1 N rS I >l 
 
 last month had suddenly created a most 
 
 ible neighbour on the very flank oi the 
 
 intry. Few suspected, however, that the 
 
 or had made the supposed mistake through 
 
 int of confidence in his army. That, I repeat, 
 
 i from their thoughts. When the truth 
 
 about the inferiority of the army partially leaked 
 
 out, as it did less than three months afterwards, 
 
 i ffect upon the nation was complex, as we shall 
 
 directly. Meanwhile, I maybe permitted to 
 
 quote the finish to this particular series of notes. 
 
 '• It was Henry who who told me of the scene 
 at the Tuileries. I own that I fostered few illu- 
 sions with regard to the state of the army. No 
 man who is constantly being told the stories I 
 could foster such illusions ; but whatever the 
 quality, I thought at any rate that there was a 
 sufficient quantity. The sentence of Randon — 
 ' Your Majesty is well aware that I have not got 
 thirty thousand troops fit to take the field at such 
 a ^hort notice' — was a kind of revelation, and not 
 of a pleasant nature. ' What did his Majesty say ? ' 
 I as • What could he say ?' was the answer. 
 
 • \n view of Randon's words, "Your Majesty is 
 well aware, " there was not even the loophole of 
 nial oi the knowledge. His Majesty simply 
 ed his head. The Emperor's knowledge of 
 thing is not the worst feature of the affair. 
 By this time Austria knows of France's weakness 
 also, for Randon has not even the sense de ne pas
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 327 
 
 ddcoztvrir le pot aux roses (not to let the cat out of the 
 bag). He blurted it all out in front of Metternich, 
 who was still there when we came in. This has 
 virtually shut the door against any future alliance 
 with Austria, for, mark my words, such an alliance 
 will be attempted sooner or later. Austria with her 
 usual duplicity will pretend to entertain the thought ; 
 at the last moment, whenever that be, she will 
 fail us. The next thing we shall hear of will be 
 a scheme for the thorough reorganisation of the 
 army. What the fate of such a bill will be, I dare 
 not say ; but I have not much trust in it. But 
 ready or not ready, my advice was the right one. 
 It would have been followed but for one con- 
 sideration, and that consideration is not the non- 
 readiness of the army ; it is that damnable 
 exhibition [cette exposition damnde). France has 
 been sacrificed once more to Paris, for Paris could 
 not have her preparations for the orgies that will 
 put money in her pockets interfered with by a war.'" 
 I was not in Paris when these notes were written ; 
 in fact, I never saw these or any other until three 
 years later. By that time both my relatives were 
 dead. But by the end of July 1866 I was back 
 in the capital and I recollect perfectly well that 
 a few days after my arrival I took a walk with 
 the younger one to the Champ de Mars to look 
 "at the preparations for the orgies that would 
 put money into the Parisians' pockets"; to use 
 the words of Fleury. My uncle who was generally
 
 l NOERCURRENTS OF 
 
 . mpathetic \\ ith regard to everything likel) 
 I the prosperity of the Empire, was not 
 onh apathetic but could scarcely conceal his 
 impatience. Heknew English and English litera- 
 ture fairly well, though he spoke English ver) 
 indifferently. Suddenly he turned round and said 
 in French, " They are building up the scenery for 
 the third act of Sardanapalus. Do you remem- 
 ber Byron's stage directions?" And there and 
 then he quoted them with a strong French accent, 
 but the text was nevertheless very intelligible to 
 me. " ' The hall of the Palace illuminated — 
 'danapalus and his Guests at Table — A storm 
 without, and Thunder occasionally heard during 
 the Banquet.' And when the thunder growls 
 and the lightning flashes there will be hundreds 
 of people ready to explain to his Majesty that 
 then; was no tempest at all ; that the noise he 
 heard was simply the roll of the drums of his 
 massed regiments which had turned out to do 
 him and his guests honour; that the lightning 
 he saw was fireworks. In sober words, my dear 
 phew, the danger comes as much from within 
 from without. Napoleon III. has his Arbaces 
 and Belesis too; they are, perhaps, not such 
 hypocrites as the minister and the grand-priest of 
 the Assyrian king ; but they are not the less 
 formidable enemies for all that. Their names 
 are Adolphe Thiers and Jules Simon. The latter 
 is honest, swayed by no personal ambition, and
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 329 
 
 absolutely and blindly yielding to his political 
 convictions, which, however much one may dis- 
 agree with them, are entitled to respect. The 
 former is the incarnation of selfishness and of 
 political intrigue. Neither of them has any need 
 of hypocrisy; they are not Napoleon's ministers; 
 they are, I repeat, the one the inveterate enemy 
 of the Emperor and the Empire, the other the 
 sworn foe of the Empire alone. They have 
 openly stated their intention to overthrow the 
 existing regime at the first opportunity, and if 
 the first opportunity does not come quickly 
 enough they will make it. You know what 
 Ferrari said in his latest book — ' The parlia- 
 mentary opposition of a country is always work- 
 ing into the hands of the alien." Read in this 
 instance the alien who is watching the most 
 vulnerable spot of France in order to attack it, 
 and you will gain a pretty correct idea that my 
 contention about the danger being as much within 
 as without is justified. Why, when the news of 
 Sadowa came, not one, but half-a-dozen, French 
 papers were rejoicing at it. There was quite a 
 scene at the offices of Le Temps, where some 
 Republicans, right for once, protested with all 
 their might '' against the short-sightedness of 
 such rejoicings." 
 
 In less than three months from that day m\ 
 relative's and Fleury's words were verified, and 
 opposition — of all shades, be it said began to
 
 
 I \|>| R< I K KIN IS OF 
 
 to the hands of the alien. The stupefaction 
 on the Emperor by the unexpected 
 n of Prussia's military supremac) over 
 ! could, it" required, prove that it was 
 ther unexpected- was not of long duration 
 In October, [866, he instituted a -rand commis- 
 sion to ex. uninc the question of reorganising the 
 neh army. Only they who lived in Paris in 
 tho.se days can conceive an idea of the formidable 
 opposition, of the Mind antagonism the project 
 met with from the very outset ; and to be fair, that 
 antagonism was not confined to the irr4conciliables> 
 the twenty-two parliamentary guerillas under 
 leadership of Thiers were called. The most 
 ; d supporters of the Empire rallied to that 
 up almost uninvited. " There will be an end of 
 lucky numbers," was the universal cry; and it is 
 more than probable that those w r hose seats had 
 hitherto L< en deemed the most secure, namely, 
 the majority, shouted loudest. 
 
 rive a dog a bad name and it will stick to 
 him." During the last few years I have been so 
 tently accused of systematic hostility against 
 France both by the English and the French them- 
 es that I have grown absolutely callous to the 
 accusation. Nevertheless, I should be sorry to 
 write- one line of unfavourable comment on a 
 matter of such importance as the patriotism of a 
 nation on insufficient proof. The opposition to 
 Napoleon III.'s scheme of army reform was,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 331 
 
 however, prompted by such mean and personal 
 motives on the part of some deputies that silence 
 on the subject would, to my mind, be more blame- 
 able than outspokenness. 
 
 The sayings and doings of the Peace Society 
 generally inspire me with an irrepressible desire 
 to throw politeness to the winds and to call 
 its members names ; yet there is no one more 
 alive to the hardships of conscription than I. 
 If the opposition to Napoleon's contemplated 
 army bill had sprung from a sincere wish to 
 diminish these hardships no one would or could 
 have withheld his sympathy, though even then 
 the " Salus Patriae suprema lex" would have 
 acted as a damper to one's admiration. But neither 
 the conscrit himself, nor his mother, sisters, nor 
 sweethearts, all of whom suffer most from his 
 enforced absence in times of peace, from his non- 
 return in times of war, occupied the thoughts of 
 the deputy. The relatives for whose feelings the 
 deputy showed the deepest concern were those 
 who suffered least, namely the father and uncle 
 of the ploughboy or young workman. And for a 
 very good reason : the father and uncle could mar 
 or make the deputy at the next general election ; 
 that is, could deprive him of his snug stipend of 
 at least ^500 per annum, or secure him the 
 undisturbed possession of it for so many years. 1 
 
 1 The members of the first French Parliament (1798) rei 1 
 18 livres per day, the livre representing to within a fraction the
 
 I NDERCURREN rs 0] 
 
 ill probably return to the subject in the next 
 
 : the present suffice it to sa) that 
 
 tilitj of the majorit) even while the bill 
 
 only in incubation produced the most dis- 
 
 lis effect outside France with regard to her 
 
 rto preponderant influence in European 
 
 affairs To restore tint preponderance, a second 
 
 Etat was necessary in order to show the 
 
 world at large that the Louis Napoleon of 1851 
 
 had not altogether ceased to be ; but the frequent 
 
 want of decision that marked the latter years of 
 
 the Emperor's reign, and had already produced 
 
 two formidable errors as far as France's prestige 
 
 oncerned, was fast developing into a chronic 
 
 which the approaching opening of that 
 
 " damnable exhibition " was not calculated to 
 
 rem en temporarily. 
 
 r by this time "the invitations to the feast" 
 
 "lit. and had been eagerly accepted by the 
 
 crowned heads of Europe. Joshua would have been 
 
 equally glad to get such an invitation from the kings 
 
 ic of the present day. The members of the Council of the Five 
 
 thrown by Bonaparte on the 18-19 Brumaire, year 
 
 VIII. ember, 1799) received 28 francs per day. During 
 
 and First Empire the deputies had 10,000 francs 
 
 num. Th uion and the Citizen Monarchy gave 
 
 pend The Second Republic allowed them 25 francs 
 
 »out the same amount they receive at present. Napo- 
 
 III. did things on a more liberal scale. The members of the 
 
 latif had 12,500 francs per annum, provided the session 
 
 :id over six months, and 2,500 francs for every additional 
 
 ith. It is not surprising they did not wish to relinquish their 
 
 "mandat" as it is grandiloquently called.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 333 
 
 of the land of Canaan. Twelve years before this, 
 Marshal Vaillant had expressed his opinion on 
 the futility of trying to promote international 
 friendships and conciliating rival sovereigns by 
 such means. " When the other one [Napoleon I.] 
 gave them entertainments and theatrical perform- 
 ances, it was on their ground and not in France ; 
 they paid the expenses, and not he." 
 
 Napoleon III., I fancy, knew the Parisians 
 better in one respect than did either his uncle or 
 any sovereign before him (the nephew). He had 
 probably come to the conclusion that in default 
 of incessant victories, the Parisians' good-will 
 to their rulers was largely dependent on the 
 latter's ability and efforts to provide them with 
 magnificent public shows and court pageants. 
 I doubt if Napoleon III. had he decided to be 
 crowned or to crown himself, would have gone 
 to Rheims like Charles X. and some of his an- 
 cestors, or, like Napoleon I., hesitated between 
 the capital and a provincial city as the scene 
 for such coronation. Instead of taking 1 the 
 Comedie- Franchise to Erfurth to act before a par- 
 terre of kings, Napoleon III. invited the parterre 
 of kings to the Rue Le Peletier, knowing that he 
 would please his metropolitan subjects and still 
 trusting that he might dazzle his royal and imperial 
 visitors. The experiment of twelve years pre- 
 viously had been so eminently successful in this 
 respect, and the exhibition of 1867 was to eclipse
 
 I \im RCURREN rs OF 
 
 .is well as the twelve others which 
 ned their portals during the nearly seven 
 that hail gone 1>\ since the "Temple ol 
 Industry" had been inaugurated on that same 
 imp de Mars. 
 And truly, results seemed to justify the Em- 
 ectations. At no period of modern 
 ry had any capital of Europe offered its hos- 
 pitality to so many exalted personages within so 
 short a period. Three emperors (for the Sultan 
 • rurkey is styled an Imperial ruler, I believe) ; 
 ning kings, three of whom were offi- 
 cially accompanied by their consorts ; nine grand- 
 dukes ; two archdukes ; two dozen princes of the 
 Mood, among whom there were at least a half- 
 n heirs apparent ; princesses, grand-duchesses, 
 dukes and duchesses by the score ; all these were 
 calculated to give Paris in particular, and France 
 in general, an intoxicating idea of their Emperor's 
 power. Did France dream at that moment that 
 among those visitors some had come to spy the 
 martial nakedness of the land, however carefully 
 hidden behind a gorgeous array — an almost too 
 3 array — of glinting cuirass and resplend- 
 ent gold lace? Did one visitor in particular, as 
 the French maintain to this day, have his cupidity 
 aroused by the unmistakable evidences of mate- 
 rial prosperity, in such curious contrast to the lack 
 of power to guard this prosperity by force of arms, 
 1. however, by those who had eyes to
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 335 
 
 see ? I cannot say. But here is a story for 
 the authenticity of which I will vouch, although 
 the source from which it is drawn is not the usual 
 one. 
 
 The King of Prussia, accompanied by Bismarck, 
 Moltke, and others, arrived in Paris on June 5th, 
 1866. The Elysee being occupied by his nephew, 
 the Czar of Russia, King Wilhelm took up his 
 quarters at the Prussian Embassy in the Rue de 
 Lille, the history of which building I intend to 
 write some clay, as well as that of the mansion in 
 the Faubourg St. Honore, which at present 
 shelters the English Ambassador. 
 
 On June 8th the Municipality gave a ball at 
 the Hotel de Ville in honour of the Imperial and 
 Royal visitors, who as a matter of course were 
 received by M. Haussmann, the Prefect of the 
 Seine — for in those days there was no Mayor of 
 Paris, nor is there now. 1 There is a maire for 
 each of the twenty arrondissements of the capital, 
 but there is no Maire de Paris. In shaking 
 hands with Haussmann, King Wilhelm is re- 
 ported to have said : " Monsieur le Prefet, 
 I have not been in Paris since 18 14. I find it 
 very changed indeed." Next morning, Hauss- 
 mann accompanied the King, Bismarck, and Moltke 
 to the heights of Montmartre, where the whole 
 
 1 There was a Mayor of Paris from the 4th September, 1870, up 
 till the outbreak of the Commune. The post was filled fust by M. 
 Arago ; then by Jules Ferry.
 
 I NDER< l KKI.N is OF 
 
 of the cit) of Paris lies practicall) at oik's feet. 
 
 where I was encamped in 1S14, M. le 
 
 said the King, pointing in the direction of 
 
 Romainville. " Yes, sire but there's a fort there 
 
 plied I laussmann. 
 
 is is the story in full. That those 
 
 two sentences of the King would have been 
 
 r left unsaid under the circumstances, 
 •t would be idle to deny; but to build upon 
 them a theory of sudden, invincible cupidity or 
 ambition which nothing would satisfy but the 
 
 ■ ssion, it" for ever so short a time, of the 
 magnificent city that lay outspread at his feet 
 would be too extravagant. And yet, if such 
 invincible cupidity or ambition had suddenly 
 obtruded itself, where would have been the 
 wonder? For years Napoleon III. had striven 
 and plotted about that Rhine frontier, the in- 
 ordinate desire for which on the part of the 
 French had nearly led to a war twenty-seven 
 years before Wilhelm of Prussia stood on the 
 heights of Montmartre. Do the French imagine 
 that Wilhelm's head was a sieve, that Jena, the 
 humiliation of his father and mother by Napoleon 
 I. had simply run through his head without 
 leaving traces there ? Do they imagine that 
 Nicholas Becker wrote his Hymiie am Rhein 
 and Max Schneckenburger his Wacht am Rheiii 
 without provocation ? And if it was permissible 
 de Musset to reply to the former : —
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 337 
 
 Nous Taverns eu, votre Rhin allemand ; 
 Ou le pere a passe, passera bien l'enfant, 
 
 it was assuredly permissible for Wilhelm to think, 
 if not to say, perhaps : " We have had your Paris ; 
 where the father passed, the children can also pass." 
 I myself am inclined to agree with the author 
 who said, " The journey to France of Moltke and 
 his royal master in 1867 was not a pleasure trip, 
 but a downright military reconnaissance." This 
 in itself would prove that the idea of a possible, 
 nay, a probable, war with France had suggested 
 itself to the minds of the three men who were 
 mainly responsible for the issue of the struggle. 
 I am confirmed in my belief by a scene I wit- 
 nessed some seventy-two hours before King 
 Wilhelm, Moltke, Bismarck, and Haussmann 
 stood on the heights of Montmartre. It was at 
 the review held in honour of the sovereigns at 
 Longchamps on the 6th June. Thanks to my 
 uncles' numerous friends in the army, we had two 
 tickets; one had been given us by General Fleury, 
 the other by the Emperor himself. We were 
 placed in the enclosure right in front of the im- 
 perial stand, where the Empress, with her son by 
 her side and surrounded by a brilliant suite, was 
 seated. At two o'clock the Emperor, the Czar, 
 and the King of Prussia, followed by their re- 
 spective staffs, appeared on the ground. It would 
 want a great word-painter to describe the 
 
 z
 
 UNDERC1 RREN rs OF 
 
 and I shall not attempt it. The 
 trian and English officers in their white and 
 let uniforms closed the procession, and then 
 about a score of yards behind them came a solitary 
 ilso in white and on horseback. He was 
 riding very slowly, much slower than the rest, and 
 seemed to scan every regiment as he passed it, as 
 if to impress deeply on his memory its number, 
 its numerical strength, its probable potentiality. 
 ' That's not an Austrian," said my uncle, who in 
 spite of his strong field-glass was not able to dis- 
 tinguish very clearly. "I wonder who it is?" 
 He had to repeat the latter part of his sentence, 
 for 1. too, was watching the figure closely. It 
 the second time I had seen it within a 
 twelvemonth. The first time was on the evening 
 "t Friday, the 29th June, 1866, at a window in 
 the- Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. At the very moment 
 it appeared at the window, a clap of thunder rent 
 ir and a flash of lightning made the sky lurid. 
 " This is Heaven's salvo in honour of our victory, 
 it <:xclaimed, its voice being distinctly 
 1 above the roar of the crowd. 
 'I wonder who it is?" repeated my uncle, 
 nudging me in the side with his elbow. " That," 
 I answered; "that's Bismarck." 
 
 '" Ah ! " remarked my uncle, lowering his glass 
 for a second. He did not say another word for 
 at least an hour, but I noticed that he kept 
 hing the white figure.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 339 
 
 " I wonder," he said very slowly on our way 
 home, " whether the sixty thousand troops as- 
 sembled to day have hidden the nakedness behind 
 them. Fleury averred that it only wanted half 
 that number. I wonder whether that white figure 
 is to be hoodwinked in this way." 
 
 He scarcely spoke for the remainder of the day, 
 but seemed lost in deep thought. The reader 
 may remember that on his return from this review, 
 Alexander II. was fired at by Berezowski, in the 
 Bois de Boulogne. The bullet only struck the 
 mouth of the horse of M. Raimbaux, the Empress's 
 equerry, who was riding by the side of the Im- 
 perial carriage. The jury of the Seine made the 
 would-be assassin a present of his life. It has been 
 stated, not once, but a hundred times, in print 
 that this act of clemency, perhaps, deprived 
 France of Russia's alliance in 1870. 
 
 To those who knew Alexander II. best, the 
 statement constitutes not only an insult to his 
 memory, but is ridiculous besides. It marks the 
 same train of thought that credited Wilhelm of 
 Prussia with nothing but cupidity at the sight of 
 Paris in all her glory. 
 
 But on that June 6th, and for two months after- 
 wards, such thoughts found no crevice in the 
 minds of the majority of Prenchmen. The in- 
 toxicating idea of their power as attested by the 
 presence of all these exalted guests left no room 
 for any other. I said the majority. My uncles 
 
 z 2
 
 
 i mm rcurr] n rs oi ; rm-: SKCOXD kmpirk 
 
 not French, and if they had been the)- would 
 not have belonged to the majority. 
 
 On the evening of that day, when the papers 
 came out with their glowing accounts, my younger 
 grand-uncle who, as I said, had scarcely opened 
 his lips since our return home, quietly got up and 
 walked to a bookcase, from which he took a 
 Shakespeare. He slowly turned the leaves until 
 une to Macbeth. "That's the future quota- 
 tion for the King of Prussia, Bismarck, and 
 Moltke," he said. Then in an impressive voice 
 he read the first line of the second scene of Act 
 II. — "That which hath made them drunk hath 
 made me bold." 
 
 He spoke no more that evening until he bade 
 us " irood ni^ht."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 " Thus far the scene on the Boulevards a few 
 hours ago. 1 Be the upshot of this war what 
 it may, one thing is certain ; the prologue to 
 it does not redound to the credit of French 
 diplomacy. Before the first shot has been fired, 
 the moral opinion of Europe, or to be correct, 
 the diplomatic opinion of Europe in as far as it 
 influences the moral opinion, will be on the side 
 
 1 The following is the continuation of a note, the whole of which 
 was apparently written in the early morning of Saturday, 16th 
 July, 1870. The first part I published in An Englishman in Paris, 
 Vol. 2, pp. 201, 202, and 203. The present part I omitted, firstly, 
 for want of room ; secondly, because though highly interesting, I 
 did not consider it consistent with the original plan of the book. I 
 have, moreover, a doubt with regard to this particular note. 
 Though it is absolutely in the same handwriting as all the others 
 from the same source, there is a slight alteration in the style, 
 which is maintained throughout the short sequels relating to the 
 siege of Paris and the Commune. If I had to pronounce an opinion 
 I should say this : the whole of the notes in my possession were 
 unquestionably written by the same man, who in the beginning 
 acted as a kind of amanuensis and afterwards continued tliem on 
 his own account, modelling his phrases on those of the original 
 dictator. 

 
 i NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 of th( King of Prussia, and I fancy it is bad 
 
 diplomac) to set opinion against you at the 
 
 For we may be sure that Europe will 
 
 I be hoodwinked by France's pretext for the 
 
 quarrel. Nay, it is doubtful whether, among the 
 
 nch themselves, those who think are deceived 
 by it. This does not exactly mean that they are 
 to the struggle, but they would have 
 preferred to let the provocation come more directly 
 from Prussia, of whose growing military power 
 they are intensely jealous and have been ever 
 since that power was revealed to them just four 
 years ago. That, in fact, is the sole foundation 
 "t their grievance, as far as the bulk of the nation 
 herself is concerned. I question whether any 
 
 iation of territory on the part of Germany 
 or her assent to the annexation of Luxemburg 
 by France would have wholly removed this 
 grievance ; but it might have proved some balm 
 to their wounded military pride, inasmuch as 
 this assent would have implied Prussia's fear 
 et France. I am not at all certain that Prussia 
 is not afraid, but if so she is not going to show 
 it. 1 Besides, she knows that if she were to 
 
 1 When the Crown Prince of Prussia (afterwards Frederick III.), 
 
 who was in Silesia at the time, heard of the scene in the Corps 
 
 :slatif on the 6th July, he exclaimed : "That means war, and 
 
 .re not prepared." He almost burst into tears. Moltke did not 
 
 lv that Prussia was not prepared, but he felt nevertheless very 
 
 uneasy. "My agents have either misinformed me," he said to 
 
 Xothomb, the Belgian statesman, "or else France has 
 
 iddenly gone mad to challenge us in this way with her feeble 
 
 .••nd lack of preparation."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 343 
 
 shirk a war now, she would have to engage 
 in one a few years hence, for with a Bonaparte 
 on the throne of France, the question of re- 
 modelling the map of Europe is never killed, 
 only scotched. This is the fault of the first, not 
 of the third, Napoleon; the latter stands almost 
 irrevocably committed to his uncle's policy. And 
 the remodelling of the map of Europe as at 
 present interpreted by the Emperor means only 
 one thing, viz., the possession of some of the 
 Rhenish provinces, the partial or whole recon- 
 struction of the French frontier on that side on 
 the basis of 18 14. Prussia might as well cut 
 her throat at once as concede such demands. 
 The resentment caused by compliance with that 
 would practically reduce her to her status of 
 the pre-Bismarckian days — in other words, to 
 her former vassalage to Austria, for neither South 
 nor North Germany would forgive her for having 
 nipped German unity in the bud, and Austria's 
 humiliation of four years ago is too fresh in 
 her mind for her not to risk reprisals by having 
 another throw for the hegemony of the Father- 
 land proper. I am virtually repeating what my 
 
 friend S of the English Embassy said to me 
 
 last Tuesday ; I am not clever enough to have 
 thought this out for myself. 1 ' If every one of 
 Napoleon III.'s Ministers for Foreign Affairs 
 
 1 I have an idea, but it is no more, that " my friend S of the 
 
 English Embassy" was Mr. Sheffield.
 
 
 l NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 had been a Richelieu and every one of his 
 
 ambassadors a Talleyrand and a Metternich in 
 
 the whole combined would not have suc- 
 
 [i .1 in bringing this consummation about,' 
 he added. 
 
 •• But though no diplomatist, I am sufficiently 
 
 rvant to know that there is neither a Richelieu 
 nor a Talleyrand at the Quai d'Orsay, and that 
 there has not been one ever since M. Drouyn de 
 Lhuys signed his first despatch there nearly 
 
 nteen years ago. The first tenant of the new 
 ilrs Affaires Etrangeres was probably far 
 superior to any of his successors as a scholar and 
 a student of history, and he had a kind of pro- 
 phetic insight into the future when he wished to 
 prevent a war between Prussia and Austria, or in 
 default of this advised the Emperor to cast in 
 his lot with Francis Joseph. Unfortunately for 
 France he was too honest, and Napoleon III. is 
 not honest enough in his diplomacy. Conspiracy 
 appears to be in the latter's blood, and it leads 
 him to conspire even against his own ministers 
 and ambassadors, so that they never know what 
 mine is going to be sprung under their very feet. 
 •• A couple of instances of this duplicity will 
 suffice. While in 1866 he instructed Drouyn de 
 Lhuys to treat with Austria in the sense of his 
 (the minister's) recommendation, he himself en- 
 deavoured to negotiate a secret treaty with Prussia, 
 always in pursuance of that greatest of his ambi-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 345 
 
 tions, the possession of German territories on the 
 left bank of the Rhine. In spite of his many mis- 
 takes with regard to Bismarck's real value as a dip- 
 lomatist, the Emperor assuredly cannot imagine for 
 one instant that his adversary has kept the contents 
 of the draft of that and of other treaties — precedent 
 and subsequent — from the intended victims of the 
 spoliation ; for I am told that there were at least 
 a half-dozen, all aiming at the same object. I do 
 not flatter myself that I was specially singled out 
 for the confidence of the English attache who 
 told me all this, although I may boast of being 
 an intimate friend. Nay, the attache himself 
 must have got his information from somewhere. 
 And what about the informant of the attache ? 
 Let us take it, however, that the channel through 
 which the secret (?) has filtered down to me is as 
 yet an extremely narrow one and only been opened 
 within a comparatively short time. What in the 
 name of all that is sensible can induce the Em- 
 peror to be so certain as he seems to be of the 
 armed support o those identical South German 
 States, some of which he has for years been trying 
 to despoil ? That there is not the slightest doubt 
 in the Emperor's mind about this support, if not 
 at the beginning of the hostilities, at any rate 
 after a few signal victories of his troops, the 
 following will show. I happen to know two or 
 three bandmasters of infantry regiments — the 
 bands of the cavalry have been almost entirely
 
 UNDERCURRENTS 0] 
 
 iince [867. Having had occasion to 
 
 the music publishers, twice 
 
 within one week, I on each occasion met one of 
 
 tcquaintances there. Both gave the same 
 
 the national hymns of the South German 
 Stat red for regimental bands. The coin- 
 
 cidence struck me, and I inquired of the second 
 after we had left the shop. ■ I do not know the 
 
 a. he answered ; 'all I know is that all the 
 loot regiments of the Guard have the same in- 
 structions, which therefore, I fancy, must come 
 from higher quarters.' 
 
 "His answer only whetted my curiosity and 
 I inquired of some one connected with higher 
 quarters. ' Oh ! ' he said ; ' I thought you would 
 have guessed the reason at once, seeing that you 
 
 ware of Lebrun's departure for Vienna. We 
 
 are also trying to negotiate some South-German 
 
 alliances, and the Emperor considered it would 
 
 polite to hail their junction with us by the 
 
 >rmance of their national hymns.' This was 
 about the middle of last month. Talk about 
 selling the bear's skin before it has been caught, 
 it is nothing to it. It is like buying a currycomb 
 a wild steed on the Pampas. If there were 
 .1 Richelieu at the Ouai d'Orsay, he could not 
 under such conditions, initiate, let alone carry out, 
 a consistent foreign policy, and Due Agenor de 
 ( iramont, Due de Guiche, is not a Richelieu. He 
 is one ot the old noblesse whom, twenty years ago,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 347 
 
 the Prince- President, in prevision of the Empire, 
 succeeded in attracting to the Elysee ' for decora- 
 tive purposes ' — to use the words of Louis 
 Napoleon himself. The Due de Guiche's seces- 
 sion from the Faubourg St. Germain caused no 
 great stir then, the Legitimists flattering them- 
 selves that he was working for the Comte de 
 Chambord, with whom he had been brought up. 
 There was no other apparent reason for his 
 defection, the Duchessed'Angouleme having left 
 him close upon ,£40,000 a year. 
 
 " But the Due soon showed that he intended to 
 be something more than merely decorative. Being 
 very noble, he claimed to be endowed with the 
 gift which, according to Moliere, was vouchsafed 
 to noblemen only in the poet's time ; namely, that 
 of knowing everything without having learnt any- 
 thing. ' Nature intended me to be a diplomatist,' 
 says one of the elder Dumas' characters. ' If 
 that be the case,' replies his interlocutor, ' we 
 had better get you an opening in the diplomatic 
 career as soon as possible. I was under the 
 impression that diplomatic skill is to a certain 
 extent a matter of hard study and experience 
 You say it is a matter of instinct, and that it cannot 
 be taught. You ought to know, seeing that by 
 your own admission you are a born diplomatist 
 so I must needs believe you.' 
 
 " One cannot help thinking that some such 
 conversation must have taken place between the
 
 I \m.k< :URRENTS OF 
 
 President and the erstwhile playfellow of 
 
 ',,',. for without the slightest 
 liminary training as a diplomatist, the latter 
 at t<> Cassel, then to Stuttgard, then to 
 I irin ami Rome, and finally to Vienna, Of 
 . when the Faubourg St. Germain dis- 
 .-•red, alter the Coup d'Etat, that Guiche had 
 been working tor his own hand, and not for the 
 Comte de Chambord's, there was a great outcry, 
 but I am not concerned with that, I am looking 
 at his diplomatic career, though I feel convinced 
 that the Embassy of Turin was the reward for 
 che's final rallying to the Empire. Nor do 
 1 say that he had learned nothing during his two 
 previous missions. What I do wash to say is 
 this : that he never served a diplomatic apprentice- 
 ship, part of which consists in the study of the 
 archives, in getting the substances of past treaties 
 at one's fingers' ends upon which to base 
 future treaties. I am well aware that a life-lone 
 study of such documents will not make up for the 
 want of diplomatic genius, any more than a 
 thorough mastery of harmony and counterpoint 
 will compensate for the absence of musical genius 
 in a composer. Nevertheless, as I heard Lord 
 mville — who speaks French like a native — say 
 one day while discussing the subject : ' Un 
 ministre des affaires ctrangeres ou un ambassadeur 
 n'a jamais mis le nez dans les archives, 
 ra tot ou tard de se mettre le doi<n dans
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 349 
 
 l'ceil " (Anglice : a Secretary for Foreign Affairs 
 or an Ambassador who has never put his nose 
 into the archives will sooner or later "put his foot 
 into it "). That is exactly what Gramont has done 
 at present. If, as it is alleged, the compli- 
 cations arising from the withdrawal of Prince 
 Leopold von Hohenzollern's candidature are but 
 so many pretexts of Bismarck to force France 
 into a war and to shift the moral responsibility 
 of it on to France's shoulders, Gramont might 
 have easily checkmated him. That is, if he, 
 Gramont, had been more or less cognisant of 
 the documents existing on the subject : or if 
 cognisant of this existence, had cared to consult 
 them, seeing that this candidature is no new 
 thing. Nearly sixteen months ago the question 
 presented itself for the first time. Bismarck 
 seemed quite willing then to admit the objec- 
 tions of France to such a candidature. The 
 Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs (Herr von 
 Thile, I believe) went farther still, and pledged 
 his personal word several times that there had 
 not been and that there could not be such a 
 question as the candidature of the Prince von 
 Hohenzollern for the crown of Spain. Of 
 course, neither I nor my informant have seen 
 the despatches of Benedetti to the Marquis de 
 la Valette, but he (my informant) is positive 
 that these despatches exist, and as in the course 
 of our long friendship I have never known him
 
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 nake an important mistake, either in dates 
 or in the substance of His information, I accept 
 
 his word ill this instance as I would in all Others, 
 
 confident thai in the main he is correct. There- 
 fore, nothing would have been easier than to 
 refer to these despatches. When Herr von 
 Thile refused to discuss the matter on the plea 
 that the Hohenzollern candidature was a family 
 affair with which the Prussian Government had 
 no right to meddle, he should have been con- 
 front! -d with Benedetti's reports, and the same 
 
 t to have been done in the case of Bismarck. 
 [f brought to book in this way, the Prussian 
 Government would have been bound to face the 
 -lion — unless it felt prepared to assume the 
 position into which it has so skilfully beguiled 
 France ; the Due de Gramont could not have 
 averred, as he did, that practically he had no 
 one in Berlin to interrogate ; Benedetti would 
 not have gone to Ems ; the mischief would have 
 been strangled in its birth, or if not, the blame 
 for it would have been laid at Prussia's door 
 instead of France's, and the latter could have 
 gene to war with an innocent front, no matter 
 
 guilt\- the mind behind it might have been ; 
 for I repeat, the whole of this candidature is 
 simply a stalking horse. That and that only 
 would have been good diplomacy. 
 
 " But the practical application of such a policy 
 would have required the loyal co-operation if not
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 351 
 
 the mutual goodwill of at least four people ; 
 namely, the Minister for Foreign Affairs himself, 
 the permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, the 
 Ambassador, and the Minister's predecessor in 
 office. As it happens, three of these four — Gramont, 
 Benedetti, and Valette — are intensely jealous of 
 one another, and Desprets, the Directeur Politique 
 (read, permanent secretary), is afraid of all three, 
 and, perhaps, afraid of himself. Desprets is the 
 most deferential individual I ever saw outside a 
 servants' hall ; this was why Drouyn de Lhuys. 
 who, though honest, is a tyrant on a small scale, 
 appointed him to the vacancy left by the appoint- 
 ment of the Marquis de Banneville to the Embassy 
 at Vienna. But if Desprets ever dreamt at all, 
 his wildest dreams never foreshadowed to him 
 such a rise, and during the six years he has occu- 
 pied the post he has not ceased to wonder at 
 himself and at everything around him. Not the 
 slightest spark of genius, not an ounce of initiative 
 in his composition, he is, nevertheless, an able 
 man and an absolutely trustworthy machine. At 
 the faintest sign from Gramont, at the most casual 
 hint, he would, no doubt, have produced all the 
 documents relating to the Hohenzollern candida- 
 ture of 1869, but it appears Gramont never said ,1 
 word, and that, coupled with the silence of Bene- 
 detti, the author of the despatches, and of Valette, 
 their recipient, may have induced Desprets into the 
 belief that the mention of them would be inoppm-
 
 UNDERCURREN is OF 
 
 He ma) not have been altogether wrong. 
 I myself am inclined to think that these documents 
 were systematically kept hack. Both Gramont 
 and Benedetti wanted to score each off his own 
 bat: a collective victory over Bismarck did not 
 suit them. In fact, the hitter's laurels of the last 
 
 <n or eight years as a diplomatist have been 
 
 many thorns to them. Gramont, who fancied 
 himself strong enough to cope with Antonelli, and 
 who in private conversation willingly ascribes his 
 
 ill from Rome (in 1861) to the Cardinal's fear 
 and jealousy of him, thought himself a match for 
 Bismarck, a presumption which his subsequent 
 stay .it Vienna has done not a little to increase, 
 and which up to the last few days has been cleverly 
 nursed both by Metternich and Nigra, who, for 
 purposes of their own, have befooled him to the 
 top of his bent. Of course, it is too early to fore- 
 with any degree of certainty the consequences 
 of all this, but of one thing I feel perfectly certain. 
 In its utter lack of discipline, of preconcerted 
 action, the French Foreign Office is not a whit 
 better than the French Army ; every one plays 
 for his own hand. 
 
 ' The Emperor is unquestionably to blame for 
 all this in the past, though it seems hard to 
 blame a man so seriously ill as he is. The 
 outer world appears to be absolutely in the 
 dark with regard to his condition, but I have 
 my own reasons for knowing that it is even
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 353 
 
 more critical than his most immediate entourage 
 suspect. 1 But however charitably disposed, one 
 cannot help doubting the wisdom that prompted 
 the promotion of men like Benedetti to the 
 foremost ranks of the diplomatic service and 
 maintained them there after their incompetence 
 had become apparent, or, to put it mildly, after 
 their competence admitted of discussion. It is 
 very certain that even as early as 1864 Bismarck 
 had made too great a mark to admit of his 
 being confronted with any but the best man the 
 French Diplomatic Service could put forward. If 
 Benedetti was that best man, then Napoleon III. 
 ought to have resigned himself to abandon, 
 at any rate, temporarily, his policy of France's 
 aggrandisement at the expense of Germany, for 
 he must have known that, with no more powerful 
 instrument than the French Minister at Turin 
 to carry out this policy, it was foredoomed to 
 failure. When Gouvion Saint-Cyr was only 
 second-in-command in Spain, he one day advised 
 a retreat before the English troops. An hour 
 or so afterwards his general-in-chief was severely 
 wounded by the bursting of a shell during a 
 reconnaissance. Saint-Cyr, compelled to take 
 
 1 See An Englishman in Paris, Vol. 2, Chs. ix. and x. Since 
 the publication of the book, and mainly in consequence of the 
 denial given to the statements it contains, I have made my own 
 inquiries, as my conclusion will show. Should this also be contra- 
 dicted, I am determined to produce the whole of my documentary 
 evidence with the names of the writers. I fancy, though, that I 
 shall not be challenged to this extent.
 
 i] RCURREN is OF 
 
 nmand, immediatel) countermands the 
 
 s battle, and wins the day. ' Why 
 
 [vise the ;< neral-in-chief this morning 
 
 not to give battle?' asked one of his officers. 
 
 :ause he would have lost it,' was the 
 
 ■ l'h«- moral i)i the story is obvious. Saint-Cyr 
 
 kin-u his chief, and felt confident that an attack 
 
 led by him would prove disastrous. Napoleon, 
 
 when he appointed Benedctti to the Embassy at 
 
 Berlin, may have fostered illusions with regard 
 
 to las ambassador's ability to cope with Bismarck ; 
 
 after Sadowa these illusions must have vanished, 
 
 and then he ought to have put a stop to 
 
 iseless demands for the Rhine provinces, 
 
 although to do Benedetti justice, Sadowa itself 
 
 was virtually foretold by him. After Sadowa, in 
 
 I'.enedetti lost his head and became the 
 
 plaything of Bismarck, who appears to have 
 
 ised on him the fascination the snake 
 
 3 on the frog. One instance of this 
 
 fascination will give an idea of the rest. It 
 
 :s to the ' Luxemburg affair,' and I doubt 
 
 whether with the exception of the Emperor, my 
 
 friend S— — , and myself, there is a living man 
 
 in France who has heard of it. Benedetti did 
 
 not describe the scene in his official reports, but 
 
 1 Practically, the story is true, but it did not happen in Spain, it 
 ned at Polotzk, and the Commander-in-Chief was Marshal 
 not, who was wounded in the arm.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 355 
 
 the Marquis de Moustier, 1 who had many sources 
 of private information in Berlin, where he had been 
 ambassador himself, came to hear of it and told 
 it to Napoleon. Moustier, in spite of his love 
 of gossip and epigram, was too indolent to tell 
 many stories ; he was a better listener than a 
 talker, and could never shake off the sybaritism 
 and the habits of dolce far uiente contracted 
 
 during his stay at Constantinople. S , who 
 
 probably had it from the same source (Berlin), 
 told me, but quite casually ; and curiously enough, 
 exactly two years after the affair had happened, 
 namely, on the 1st April of this year. We were 
 talking of the time-honoured custom of trying to 
 make a fool of some one on that day, when the 
 evening papers came in. They contained an 
 account of the deputations that had waited upon 
 Bismarck that morning to wish him ' many 
 happy returns.' 'Well,' said I, 'Bismarck's 
 mother did not make a fool of her fellow-beings 
 when she ushered him into the world on that 
 
 day.' ' No,' replied S , ' but the son takes 
 
 a delight in making fools of others on that or 
 any other day, but by preference on that one. 
 Ask Benedetti." And noticing that I did not 
 catch the drift of his remark, he told me the 
 following : — 
 
 1 The successor of Drouyn de Lhuys and the predecessor of the 
 Marquis de la Valette at the French Foreign Oi'lice (September 
 1866— August 1868). 
 
 A A 2
 
 I MM RCURRENTS OF 
 
 •• 4 As early as the [8th March, 1867, the Lux- 
 emburg question was made the subject ol an 
 interpellation in the Parliament of the North 
 German I nfederation. Bismarck walked 
 erly round it. Mean while the negotiations 
 een William III. and Napoleon III. pro- 
 ceeded ap.ue, the French Government reminding 
 the Dutch Government throughout that the 
 official announcement of the concluded trans- 
 action should reach Berlin from Paris, and not 
 from the Hague. No heed was paid to this 
 mmendation, and when on the 28th March 
 the Emperor was informed by telegraph that 
 William III. was willing to transfer the Grand- 
 I hichv to France, and requested the latter to 
 arrange with Prussia to that effect, Benedetti 
 found that the information had been forestalled, 
 and by no less a personage than the Dutch 
 Minister in Berlin. As a matter of course, 
 Moustier was wild, and his rage did not abate 
 when two days later — on the 30th — Benedetti 
 apprised him that the news had created the 
 greatest excitement in Berlin, and that Bennigsen 
 had given notice of an interpellation on the 
 subject for the next day. It was said at the 
 time that Moustier's answer sent early in the 
 morning of the 1st April was couched in the most 
 defiant spirit, that he was thoroughly aroused and 
 1 his room at the Quai d'Orsay like a wild 
 panther in his cage, that his habitual insouciance
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 357 
 
 suddenly disappeared and that his antagonism 
 against Bismarck, pent-up for many years, 
 found vent in an avalanche of epithets and curses 
 and yells. 1 The exact wording- of Moustier's 
 answer is probably known to few people, perhaps 
 not even to Bismarck, for he prevented its com- 
 munication to him — at any rate, its official com- 
 munication ; although on its receipt Benedetti 
 went immediately to the Ausw'drtigen Angcle- 
 genheiten (Foreign Office) for the purpose. 
 Bismarck was just going to the Reichstag when 
 Benedetti was shown in. After the usual ex- 
 change of courtesies, Benedetti was about to pro- 
 duce the telegraphic message, when Bismarck 
 held up his hand. Benedetti said afterwards that 
 Bismarck was visibly affected ; he may have been, 
 for one word too much on either side might have 
 driven both countries headlong into a war ; but I 
 feel certain that Bismarck did not show his emo- 
 tion. He merely told Benedetti that he was 
 unable to take cognisance of the message officially 
 at that moment inasmuch as he was expected at 
 the Reichstag, and invited the Ambassador to 
 walk as far with him. They took a short cut 
 across the gardens of the Foreign Office to a 
 passage leading to the Leipziger Strasse, talking 
 
 1 This antagonism dated from at least a score of years. Here is 
 a sample of it. In 1851 Moustier was discussing Prussia's attitude 
 in the Eastern Question with Bismarck. "That policy may lead 
 you to another Jena," remarked Moustier. "Why not to another 
 Leipzig or Waterloo?" was Bismarck's reply.
 
 I NDER< l RRENTS 01 
 
 went : Benedetti trying all the while to 
 
 municate the contents of the telegraphic mes- 
 
 in his pocket, Bismarck equally determined 
 
 to prevent his doing so. " I am going to the 
 
 Reichstag," he said, "to answer an interpellation 
 on the question of the eventual sale of the Grand- 
 
 v of Luxemburg, which question is causing 
 a great deal of excitement in the papers." " I 
 am aware of it," replied Benedetti, "and that is 
 why I am so anxious to communicate my tele- 
 graphic message to you. It appears to me most 
 nt." " One moment," interrupted Bismarck, 
 waving off the telegraphic message for the fourth 
 or fifth time, "one moment. I am going to tell 
 you my answer to the interpellation. I am going 
 to say that the Government has no knowledge of 
 the re.il condition of the question ; consequently, 
 that I cannot make a public statement of what 
 it intends to do. I am goincr to add that I feel 
 assured that there is no intention on the part of 
 any Power to encroach on the unquestionable 
 right-, of the Germanic countries, and that the 
 
 rnment trusts to have these rights respected 
 by mean- of a pacific policy. This is what I am 
 going to reply to the interpellation, because it is 
 the truth, and because this declaration will enable 
 me to open negotiations in a friendly way and to 
 perhaps, to an understanding. But I could 
 not give a similar answer if J knew that the con- 
 ventionfor the sale of the Grand Duchy has been
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 359 
 
 concluded." The last words were spoken with 
 great emphasis: then Bismarck went on, "In 
 this case I should be*obliged to hold quite different 
 language, and a conflict between France and our- 
 selves would be the inevitable result." By that 
 time the two had emerged into the Leipziger 
 Strasse where Bismarck stopped Benedetti. "And 
 now," he concluded pointedly, "I ask you whether 
 you have a telegraphic message to hand to me or 
 not ? " Benedetti did not answer, he simply 
 bowed his head, put the paper into his pocket, and 
 walked away.' 
 
 " Others may judge the direct and indirect 
 political consequences of this scene ; I am mainly 
 concerned with the absolute lack of discipline at 
 the Quai d'Orsay as implied by it. Here is an 
 ambassador who deliberately disregards the in- 
 structions of his chief and yet he is not recalled. 
 On the contrary the Emperor virtually pats him 
 on the back and says, ' Well done, thou good and 
 faithful servant ; thou hast prevented a bloody 
 strife between two great countries.' For that is 
 what the sequel to the episode practically means ; 
 the contemplated purchase of Luxemburg was 
 allowed to drop, the telegraphic message was 
 never shown, and was annulled in spite of those 
 who, when they heard what had happened, in- 
 sisted that it was not too late to show it then. 
 But the Emperor, it was said at the time, did not 
 want to go to war, he was not prepared. And
 
 I NDERCURREN rS 01 
 
 his foreign policy which, we must remember, 
 
 not imposed upon him by his parliament as 
 
 late as two years and a half ago when he did not 
 
 profess t<> be a constitutional sovereign, this 
 
 ign policy Is always bringing him within an 
 
 of war; in fact, to use an Americanism, "he 
 
 is always ' spelling ' for it. 1 If he did not wish to 
 
 make the Luxemburg question a casus belli, he 
 
 ought to have begun by doing what he did in the 
 
 end : submit the matter to the Powers that signed 
 
 the Convention of 1839. If he does not wish to 
 
 go to war, Moustier ought to have been relieved of 
 
 his functions there and then, inasmuch as his 
 
 1 I have by me a short note in the handwriting of my younger 
 grand-uncle which practically says the same thing, but illustrates 
 it with an anecdote. " The Emperor in his foreign policy always 
 reminds me of Franz Hals and his aspirations 'to be translated to 
 Heaven shortly.' Whether from personal inclination or in order 
 to keep the ' pot of military glory ' of which the French are so 
 fond ' on the boil,' the Emperor seems to be ever within a hair' s 
 breadth, but at the critical moment recoils from it. Our worthy 
 of the brush was for ever praying to be taken to the Almighty's 
 bosom. One night, when, as usual, he was 'half seas over' and 
 had been fetched in that condition from the tavern by two of his 
 pupils who were to become famous, namely, Adriaan Brouwer and 
 Adriaan van Ostade, he uttered his nightly prayer, ' Good Lord, 
 take me to thy bosom soon,' and got into bed. Immediately 
 afterwards, he found himself slowing rising in the air, ' Not yet, 
 good Lord, not yet, thy humble servant is not prepared.' And to 
 reat satisfaction, the bedding with himself in it, assumed its 
 original position. The two Adriaans with a fellow pupil, Dirk van 
 Deelen, had slung ropes under their master's mattress and given 
 him a foretaste of the ascent he was always praying for. It is 
 it Franz never prayed again. If the Emperor could only 
 be made to take warning in some such manner ! But all lessons 
 appear to be lost upon him."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 361 
 
 telegraphic message, if delivered by Benedetti, 
 would have made war almost inevitable. All this 
 brings me back to my original contention, viz. 
 that if there happened to be a Richelieu or a 
 Talleyrand at the Quai d'Orsay, he would prac- 
 tically be manacled under the present conditions, 
 which not only admit of every man's working for 
 his own hand, but put a premium on his doing so. 
 " Such a system or rather want of system is apt 
 to influence all but the highest-minded. The 
 others forget that they are only so many wheels 
 in the machinery of their country's foreign policy, 
 and that if they tamper with or clog the other 
 wheels the machinery must necessarily come to 
 grief. Benedetti, in order to obtain a personal 
 victory over Bismarck which would obliterate the 
 various defeats he has suffered at the latter's 
 hand subsequently to Sadowa, systematically neg- 
 lects to point out the existence of previous 
 documents on the Hohenzollern candidature; 
 Gramont, who owes his exalted position to a 
 kind of favouritism, which would not for one 
 moment be tolerated in a well-regulated mer- 
 cantile office of second-rate importance — Gramont, 
 the Minister for Foreign Affairs and sometime 
 Ambassador at Rome and Vienna, not to mention 
 the smaller capitals — either does not know of the 
 existence of these documents or else is equally 
 determined not to refer to them, lest reference 
 should minimize the dclat of victory he confidently
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 t< d to obtain over Bismarck, and which he 
 bent upon having attributed only to his diplo- 
 matic .skill. Therehasbeen 'had blood' between 
 
 se two for years. Bismarck has never curbed 
 his tongue with regard to Gramont's over-ween- 
 in- conceit, his contemptible incompetence as a 
 diplomatist, his dandy-like habits, and the rest; 
 and Gramont hates him accordingly. In fact, I 
 remember very well that exactly two months ago, 
 at Gramont's advent to office, several German 
 papers, strongly suspected of being inspired by 
 
 : n; irek, expressed their fear lest this diplo- 
 matist (Gramont) who since Sadowa had been 
 mixed up with all the attempts to establish an 
 entente cordiale between the Court of Vienna and 
 that of the Tuileries, should continue, as a minister, 
 the policy he had pursued as an ambassador. 
 ' Such an attitude,' they said, or words to that 
 effect, 'would be fraught with the greatest 
 danger to France from the side of Prussia.' 
 This sentence, if properly analysed, was not only 
 daring on Bismarck's part, but presumptuous 
 
 ides : for it implied, firstly, a threat ; secondly, a 
 threat based upon the assumed military superiority 
 <>! Prussia over France. No doubt, Bismarck 
 felt and feels certain of this superiority, but that 
 was no reason for him to fling the knowledge into 
 h ranee s face, knowing as he must that on no 
 point an- the French more susceptible than on 
 that of their military prestige. This is but
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 363 
 
 another proof that in Bismarck's mind war 
 between Prussia and France had become in- 
 evitable, as long as the latter would persist in 
 seeking an alliance with Austria, for he really 
 could not have expected France to remain isolated 
 at his bidding. The very fact of his opposition 
 to France's rapprochement with a great European 
 Power showed the necessity of such a rapproche- 
 ment as far as France was concerned. The Emperor, 
 however, should have chosen differently. Alex- 
 ander II., and not Francis Joseph, was the 
 logical ally of Napoleon III., and Napoleon III. 
 himself would have probably cast his net in that 
 direction but for two considerations. The first 
 was the well-known affection of the Tzar for his 
 uncle ; the second, the invincible desire on the 
 Emperor's part for those Rhine provinces, which 
 desire would brook no delay in its satisfaction. 
 
 " There is a fourth man who, were he other 
 than he is, nwht have saved the situation. I am 
 thinking of la Valette. Although the whole of 
 the pourparlers of the Hohenzollern candidature 
 of '69 were kept a secret, he assuredly must have 
 read the documents relating to it, for he was 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time. He 
 could have easily reminded the Emperor of the 
 existence of these documents. The Emperor, 1 
 repeat, is ill, in body and mind, so ill, in fact, as 
 to be absolutely unfit for the slightest exertion ol 
 any kind. Did la Valette remind the Emperor?
 
 UND1 RCI R.RENTS OF 
 
 Did the Emperor receive the reminder and in a 
 moment of intense agony, such as he suffers 
 frequently, put it aside and forget all about it 
 afterwards ? Was the letter suppressed by the 
 Emperor's immediate entourage before it could 
 reach its destination ? All these surmises, but 
 iallv the last one, offer food for serious 
 reflection. Justice, moreover, demands that one 
 should give la Yalette the benefit of the doubt. 
 Unfortunately, those who know la Valette best 
 are not disposed to give him that benefit. If all 
 I hear from London be true, he created a worse 
 impression there as an ambassador than Persigny. 
 •He is a badly executed copy of a not very 
 sympathetic original,' writes one of my English 
 friends. ' There is the same constant pre- 
 occupation to appear le trcs grand seigneur to 
 which people objected so much in Morny. But 
 Morny had brains, and could appreciate the brains 
 of others ; la Yalette has only conceit, impudence, 
 and cunning. Nothing is more comical than to 
 see him and Bernstorf together. It is a tableau 
 vivant of the diplomatic ox and the frog. The 
 ox, however, is very soothing, while the frog 
 irritates one beyond endurance. He is intensely 
 jealous of the reputation of others, and throughout 
 wishes to convey that he and not the Minister for 
 ign Affairs conducts the foreign policy of 
 France.' 
 
 ' Thus far those who profess their allegiance
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 365 
 
 to the Emperor. Those who are the avowed 
 enemies both of the sovereign, the dynasty he 
 represents, and the Empire itself might have 
 more effectually prevented this war, if instead 
 of fanning the ever-smouldering embers of 
 antagonism between the two countries into a 
 blaze, they had thrown the cold water of their 
 disapproval on it. The foremost of these 
 offenders is Thiers, who by an interpellation he 
 had not sufficient courage to make himself, 
 positively goaded Gramont into his bellicose 
 attitude, though truth compels one to say that 
 Gramont wanted but little goading. Thiers 
 chose Cochery as his mouthpiece. But for his 
 illness the Emperor would have avoided the 
 trap, for Thiers had warned him as late as six 
 weeks ago of his intention to raise difficulties. 
 Here is the whole of the story, as I have it on 
 the most unimpeachable authority. 
 
 " One morning in the early part of June 1870, 
 hence more than a month before the war- 
 cloud appeared on the horizon, the Em- 
 peror, being then at St. Cloud, was strolling 
 gently along that large avenue of sycamores 
 situated opposite the windows of his private apart- 
 ments on the ground floor of the palace. The 
 disease from which he had been suffering for 
 several years, and which was eventually to carry 
 him to his grave, had reached an acute stage ; 
 nevertheless on that morning he was more or less
 
 i :urren rs 01 
 
 ,m pain. By his side walked his kins- 
 
 Duchesse de Mouchy (nte Princesse 
 
 Lt), who had only arrived a few minutes 
 
 md joined him thus informally at her 
 
 she had an important communica- 
 
 tomake. Itwas to the following effect : That 
 
 morning, M. Thiers, through the intermediary 
 
 of the Martinis Philippe de Massa, had requested 
 an interview with her. She, the Duchesse, was 
 ul upon the Emperor to grant Thiers a 
 audience. ' What can M. Thiers want 
 with the Emperor ? ' the Duchesse had exclaimed 
 in a tone of surprise. The surprise was not un- 
 justified, considering that M. Thiers at that time 
 not only the avowed enemy of the Empire, 
 but of the Emperor himself. She was less sur- 
 at Thiers's selection of an ambassador 
 in the shape of a captain of a crack regiment 
 of dragoons, and personally attached to the Em- 
 peror. The second husband of the marquis's mother 
 Comte Roger (du Xord), a consistent Repub- 
 lican and an intimate friend of Thiers, at whose 
 house the Comtesse spent many evenings, and 
 whither her son accompanied her now and then. 
 Emperor could be vindictive enough, but his 
 vindictiveness was, at the best, sporadic, and he 
 
 J. ' 
 
 often swallowed a camel in the shape of an 
 
 e while straining at a gnat. He never 
 
 Lady Jersey for having pooh-poohed his 
 
 for the hand of her daughter; he sent
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 367 
 
 David d'Angers into exile for having- refused to 
 finish the tomb of Queen Hortense ; while he 
 condoned, as I will show in the course of these 
 pages, much graver injuries against himself. 
 Adam Smith has said somewhere that people 
 will sooner tolerate the enemies of their friends 
 than the friends of their enemies. Louis Napo- 
 leon was the exception ; he showed no resentment 
 against the friends of his enemies, but he would 
 scarcely have tolerated the enemies of his friends. 
 Thiers, on the other hand, knew no such gene- 
 rosity ; he tolerated the enemies of his friends — if 
 he could get something by it — while it is doubtful 
 whether he would have welcomed the friend of an 
 enemy. In this instance, Napoleon III. did not 
 object to his young ordnance officer visiting the 
 house of Thiers ; Thiers, on the other hand, 
 would not have admitted him for a moment, but 
 for his constant hope of worming some more or 
 less important secret out of a charming and 
 accomplished dragoon who had virtually the run 
 of the Tuileries. It could scarcely be otherwise 
 with one bearing the name of Regnier. In view 
 of all this, the Duchesse de Mouchy, though sur- 
 prised at Thiers's request, was not surprised at 
 his choice of the ambassador. 
 
 " In reply to the Duchesse's question, M. de 
 Massa gave some additional information. ' M. 
 Thiers,' he said, ' wishes you to tell the Emperor 
 that a near, nay, impending, war between France
 
 I \i>i RCURRENTS OF 
 
 and Prussia is unavoidable ; that, to carry on this 
 
 essfully the Emperor will require men o{ 
 
 tried knowledge and experience instead of the 
 
 able ones of which the Ollivier Cabinet is 
 composed ; that the Emperor will require, above 
 all, popular men who have the ear and confidence 
 of the nation, and that, under the circumstances, 
 
 - ready and willing to form a ministry under 
 
 >\\ n leadership.' 
 • llie I hichesse pondered for a moment. ' You 
 ire right, 1 she remarked at last; 'the news is 
 indeed very important and serious, but before I 
 ran communicate it to the Emperor, I must have 
 M. Thiers's personal permission.' M. de Massa 
 
 ace saw the force of the remark. He went 
 away immediately and in less than half an hour 
 returned, accompanied by Thiers, who not only 
 
 ited what M. de Massa had said, but pointed 
 out to the Duchesse the necessity of her seeing the 
 Emperor at once. So anxious, in fact, was Thiers 
 to set the matter going that he offered to stay 
 at the Duchesse's while she proceeded to St. 
 (Joud. Here again we have particulars which 
 will remove the faintest doubt as to the abso- 
 truth of the whole affair. Among other 
 
 ious autographs she had a collection of 
 
 •s from F£nelon to her husband's kins- 
 
 lan (the Vicomtesse de Noailles), during 
 
 it controversy between the famous 
 
 of Cambray and Bossuet. Thiers
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 369 
 
 asked permission to examine them while await- 
 ing her return. 
 
 " The Emperor had listened to the Duchesse 
 without interrupting her by as much as a word ; 
 he had only smiled, with one of those ineffable 
 smiles which, to his friends, needed no inter- 
 pretation, which all the misinterpretation of his 
 enemies failed to rob of its charm. When she 
 had quite finished, he led the way to his room, 
 still in silence. ' My dear Anna,' he said, when 
 they were seated ; ' this is not the first nor the 
 second time M. Thiers has made similar over- 
 tures to me under one pretext or another. But 
 very recently, Madame Colonna 1 came to offer me 
 his co-operation to found the parliamentary regime. 
 I may frankly tell you that I have not much faith 
 in, nor much sympathy with, this very meddlesome, 
 arbitrary, and irrepressible personage. I have 
 a distinct recollection of his tactics in the early 
 days of the Presidency. He positively pervaded 
 the Elysee. Each morning he came, as it were, to 
 settle with me — in reality for me — my programme 
 for the day ; he brought me my speeches, prac- 
 tically his speeches, ready written out ; in short, 
 he endeavoured to interfere in everything. 
 He had to have a finger in every pie ; no ques- 
 tion was to be discussed or decided without 
 
 1 Adele, Princesse Colonna di Castiglioni, nee d'Affry, better 
 known to the world at large under her artistic pseudonym of 
 " Marcello " the sculptor. 
 
 1; 1;
 
 
 I NDERCURREN is m 
 
 More than twenty years have passed since the 
 ■ • -\ of inauguration of the chief magistracy, 
 i remember very vividly his look of stupefac- 
 tion and anger, when on the morning of that da)* I 
 gave him back the manuscript of a speech he 
 had composed for me, telling him at the same 
 time that, though deeply grateful for his counsels 
 and his arduous interest in me, I intended hence- 
 forth to manage my own affairs. Our estrange- 
 ment and his frenzied opposition date from that 
 morning. I have been told that journeymen 
 bakers suffer excruciating pains in their muscles, 
 when an accident compels them to leave off 
 kneading the dough. M. Thiers suffers simi- 
 larly from being bereft of power, from being no 
 longer the arbiter of the Government. His rest- 
 • opposition is in reality the acute St. Vitus's 
 dance of inactivity. But for this St. Vitus's dance 
 he would be dead. Nevertheless, in view of the 
 grave events with which we maybe confronted at 
 
 aid in fact, up till 1830, when he was nearly forty-four, 
 ruizot) had never seen the sea. 'And if it had not been 
 for an electoral journey to Normandy, I might not have seen 
 it then ' : he said. I pointed out to him that M. Thiers had 
 never had a country house ; that he did not seem to care for 
 nature, for birds, or for flowers. 'Ah, that's different,' he 
 smiled. ' I did not care for the country, because I had never 
 seen it. Thiers does not like it, because the birds, the 
 flowers, the trees, live and grow without his interference, and 
 he does not care that anything on earth should happen without 
 his having a hand in it.' " — An Englishman in Paris, vol. ii. 
 ch. 2.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 371 
 
 any moment, I would recall him to power, if I 
 thought he could be useful. I do not say that 
 such a step would afford me pleasure, for I do not 
 like the man and have no reason to like him ; but 
 it would give me no pain. Unfortunately, I am 
 no longer the master in this respect. I have 
 taken in earnest to my part of a constitutional 
 ruler, and will not depart from it. The actual 
 Ministry commands a considerable majority in both 
 Chambers ; to dismiss this Ministry abruptly and 
 without a valid motive, would be an act of personal 
 interference which I must no longer commit. If, 
 at some future period, near or distant, the Chamber 
 should overthrow M. Ollivier's Cabinet on an 
 interpellation of M. Thiers or on an important 
 question, I might entrust M. Thiers with the task of 
 constituting a Ministry ; but at present I am bound 
 to attempt nothing against a Minister who appears 
 to enjoy the confidence of Parliament. Pray 
 thank M. Thiers for me, and tell him that, 
 while deeply obliged for his warning and trouble, 
 I cannot, at any rate for the present, accept his 
 proposal. He is an old and experienced 
 parliamentarian, and will no doubt understand 
 and appreciate the motives that prompt my 
 conduct.' 
 
 " Whether Thiers understood the motives of 
 the Emperor's refusal of his services or not, it 
 is certain that he failed to appreciate them ; for 
 when the Duchesse de Mouchy, on her return to 
 
 1; 1; 2
 
 \:<, CURRENTS <>! SE< OND EMPIRE 
 
 house in the Pare Monceau gave him the 
 
 Emperor's answer toned down, we may be sure, 
 and shorn ^\ the sovereign's prefatorial remarks 
 
 liners' character — Thiers flew into a tower- 
 ing rage, stamped his feet and bounced out of 
 the room, exclaiming in that shrill treble of his, 
 • Is that it ? lie does not want me. He'll find 
 to his eost that he does want me. And then I'll 
 not want him.' "
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 I reached Paris on Saturday night, 16th July, 
 1870, hence, four-and-twenty hours after the 
 virtual though not the official declaration of war 
 between France and Prussia. I had no longer a 
 home in the French capital, for both my relatives 
 were gone. In spite of all that I had heard and 
 seen for fourteen years, during which I had been 
 an attentive listener and, considering my age, a 
 careful observer, I felt almost certain that France 
 would hold her own in the forthcoming struggle, 
 but I did not imagine for a single instant that she 
 would inflict so crushing a defeat on her adversary 
 as her adversary eventually inflicted on her. 
 
 Before I went to bed that night my opinions 
 had undergone a considerable change — I will not 
 say a radical one. I did not like the tone of the 
 prologue. I had seen the preliminaries to the 
 war with Austria in '59, and although I was too 
 young then to judge discriminate])', they began
 
 i NDERCURRENTS 01 
 
 , nr to me .is I made my way slowly through 
 the dense crowd lining the Boulevards from the 
 Faubourg Poissonni&re, where I had taken up my 
 quarters, to the Cafe* de la Paix, whither I was 
 bound. 
 
 linst my will, as it were, a comparison 
 between the scenes of eleven years before with 
 
 I was beholding at that moment gradually 
 forced itself upon me. Worse than all, my 
 recollections, having got loose from their moorings, 
 drifted to Berlin, during the latter end of June, 
 1 866, at the outbreak of the war between Prussia 
 and her then formidable rival Austria. I am no 
 physiognomist, but I candidly own that I have 
 more faith in the man who at the hour of supreme 
 danger sets his teeth tightly and stares as if his 
 eyes would come out of their sockets than in the 
 man who grins open-mouthed and yells and rolls his 
 
 in fine frenzy. With the exception of the 
 one shout that greeted Bismarck's appearance on 
 his balcony on that Friday night of which I have 
 spoken in a previous chapter, I heard no howling, 
 no imprecations against the Austrians in the 
 Prussian capital. Nor did the Berliners sing. 
 I here were tightly wedged masses unter den 
 Linden from the Brandenburg Gate to the Palace 
 ot the King, but they were earnest and subdued, 
 and under the broiling, almost tropical sun they 
 waited patiently for a sight of the sovereign to 
 whom were confided their destinies as a nation.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 375 
 
 I cannot speak from personal experience of the 
 attitude and demeanour of the Berlin people in 
 July, 1870, but there is, perhaps, more valuable 
 evidence than mine could be. It is that of 
 a representative Frenchman in the highest sense 
 of the term. 1 " At seven o'clock in the evening 
 of the 19th (July), the Secretary of the Senate 
 handed me my passports. I was ready to 
 start, and I left Hamburg immediately. Behind 
 me lay Germany, uprisen from one end to the 
 other and rushing to arms, grave, solemn, full of 
 hatred, conscious that she was. engaging in a 
 mortal struggle, ready for every sacrifice. In 
 Paris I only beheld people yielding to violent 
 excitement, tumultuous scenes, bands of drunken 
 men, indulging in patriotic saturnalias. The 
 contrast was heartrending." 
 
 What was heartrending to the truly patriotic 
 Frenchman became well-niofh disoustinof to the 
 
 o o O 
 
 alien with less fiercely pulsing blood in his veins, 
 but who, alien though he was, had learned to love 
 France during and for the many happy years he 
 had spent within her borders. I was almost sorry 
 I had come to Paris ; the confidence of the previous 
 four-and-twenty hours in France's ability to 
 confront the imminent clanger with something 
 like moderate results received a shock there and 
 then. I had not been taught to regard the Bible 
 
 1 M. G. Rothan, Minister-Plenipotentiary to the Hanseatii I ree 
 Towns.
 
 IM'1 i:< I RRENTS OF 
 
 absolutely divinely inspired book, but my 
 had always insisted that it was the most 
 marvellous, the most complete manual for the 
 mce of humanity under all circumstances. 
 M\ thoughts involuntarily went out to this 
 septuagenarian monarch in his modest palace in 
 Berlin, between whom and King Ahab of Israel I 
 ■i to trace some resemblance. Wilhelm had 
 also complied with the first — and the just — 
 demands of his would-be conqueror, and he also, 
 hearing of the brawling and bragging and bellowing 
 of the French, of their cries of "A Berlin, A 
 Berlin ! " might say — " Let not him that girdeth on 
 his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." 
 It took me nearly an hour to get to the Cafe 
 de la Paix, where 1 knew I should find the only 
 man in Paris whom I could frankly ask for 
 information without exposing myself to the risk 
 of a rebuff and worse perhaps. Joseph Ferrari 
 my uncles' old friend, and knew their nephew 
 well enough not to suspect him of being a spy in 
 the pay of Bismarck. Even at that early stage 
 of the proceedings I did not feel quite certain 
 in this particular respect with regard to my rela- 
 French triends, for it must not be supposed 
 that the spy-mania sprang full-armed from the 
 French brain at the outbreak of the Franco- 
 man War. The first symptoms of the disease 
 1 shown themselves soon after Sadowa. I 
 remember perfectly well that shortly after my
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 377 
 
 return from Germany at that time I gave some 
 of our familiars a description — as far as I was 
 able — of the regiments I had seen, and in the 
 course of the conversation I happened to quote 
 the remark of a Prussian officer to whom I had 
 been introduced, about Baron Talleyrand- Perigord, 
 Benedetti's predecessor. The words had scarcely 
 left my lips when I felt rather than saw that I had 
 made a mistake. My uncles, who were kindness 
 personified, looked uncomfortable, but they did 
 not comment upon my want of reticence that 
 night. Next day Joseph Ferrari called earlier 
 than was his wont. " My dear boy," he said in 
 his fatherly way, " you allowed your tongue 
 to run away with you. You will probably 
 spend a great deal of your time in France when 
 both your uncles and I will be gone. You are 
 not French, and if you were to live a hundred 
 years among them they would never consider you 
 nor call you such. The extent of their graciousness 
 would be to call you a real Parisian, a doubtful 
 compliment to my mind. But even that doubtful 
 compliment would have to be gained by the 
 thorough suppression of your own individuality 
 and your absolute abstention from enlightening 
 them on any and everything that implied a doubt 
 of their superiority as a nation. Last night when 
 we left here, two of your uncles' constant visitors 
 and oldest acquaintances wished to know why you 
 went to Germany, and asked me seriously whether
 
 l NDERCURR1 NTS OF 
 
 i were [n communication with 
 
 rck. Of course, in plain, unvarnished lan- 
 
 I meant : Did I think you a spy ? I know 
 
 you are, and what you arc, l>ut I considered 
 it w ^ve you a timely hint." 
 
 I need not say that, ever after that day, I had 
 not the slightest hesitation in asking- my uncles' 
 friend for information on any situation whatsoever. 
 I <Jul this all the more readily in this instance, 
 knowing that diplomatically he was not only 
 the best-informed man in France, but the man 
 who had probably thoroughly sifted whatever in- 
 formal ion he had got and subjected the residuum 
 to the most critical, not to say microscopically, 
 mental analysis. 
 
 Ferrari was seated outside the cafe amidst a 
 group of seven or eight, Imperialists to a man. I 
 knew most of them by sight, but no more. There 
 
 a couple of erstwhile prefects, and as many 
 
 is, and, if my memory serves me aright, for I 
 did not take down their names in the note I wrote 
 
 morning, MM. Charles Abatucci, the son of 
 the former Keeper of the Seals, and Jolibois, the 
 eminent barrister who subsequently was counsel 
 l<.r the defence in that terrible lawsuit of Jules 
 Favre against his friend Laluye, who had accused 
 him o| having falsified the civil registers, during 
 which lawsuit the family affairs of the plaintiff 
 
 mercilessly laid bare by M. Jolibois. 
 Ferrari shook hands with me very cordially, but
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 
 
 !79 
 
 did not even ask me when I had arrived. It was the 
 first time we had met since, a twelvemonth earlier, 
 we had parted on the platform of the Northern 
 Railway Station, whither he had accompanied the 
 remains of my younger uncle on their way to 
 their last resting-place in a little cemetery near 
 Amsterdam, where the yellow waters of the Y 
 splash in low, plaintive ripples against the shore. 
 
 I took the hint, ordered some coffee, and sat 
 silently by his side for nearly three hours, at the 
 end of which I had arrived, at any rate, at one 
 conclusion, viz., if Bismarck, as was alleged at 
 the time, spent a great deal of money in main- 
 taining a staff of spies in France, he was absolutely 
 flinging these sums out of the window. There 
 was no need to go hunting for secret information ; 
 everything worth knowing seemed to be known 
 to at least half-a-dozen persons nearest to the 
 Emperor, and they in their turn made no scruple 
 about telling their friends. A decently-bred and 
 well-dressed man, provided with a few letters of 
 introduction to some of the best-known deputies 
 and officials, or to a couple of members of the 
 court circle, would simply have to listen. In less 
 than an hour, for instance, I felt perfectly certain 
 with regard to two or three main points. There 
 was neither a fixed plan of mobilisation nor a plan 
 of campaign. With regard to the alliances France 
 might possibly have contracted, all Ferrari's in- 
 terlocutors agreed that various attempts had been
 
 I NDERCURR1 NTS 0] 
 
 ire them ; but while one section stoutly 
 
 maintained that the treaties relating to them were 
 
 Jed and signed in the archives at the Quai 
 
 the other w.e, equally positive that the 
 
 itiations had altogether fallen through. And 
 
 ill these men surrounding Ferrari, and in- 
 tellig< nt to a degree- — though, of course, intellect- 
 ually, not to be compared with him — would have 
 
 ed at the hare suggestion that their country 
 might be crushed in the coming struggle. These 
 men had many admirable qualities and not a few 
 virtues ; their great defect, vanity — for their 
 national pride was only collective vanity — rendered 
 all these virtues practically useless. " Vanity," said 
 la Rochefoucauld, "if it does not overthrow all 
 the virtues of a man, at any rate shakes them in 
 their foundations." "Vanity," wrote Florian, 
 " makes us as much dupes as fools." These 
 men, I doubt not, had all read their " Maximes " 
 and their " Fables," and yet two of the most 
 valuable lessons they contain had been lost upon 
 m. 
 
 Now, you have heard the bells ring, but 
 not know who pulls the ropes," said 
 ri to me that night as I left him at 
 his door. " I fancy I can show you not only 
 the bell-ringers themselves, but enlighten you as 
 to the strength of the ropes they are pulling." 
 And from that hour until a few days after 
 
 rth, when I left Paris temporarily, he indi-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 381 
 
 cated to me the " undercurrents " that had been 
 and were still at work. The information gathered 
 from him piecemeal, as well as what I saw per- 
 sonally during those three weeks, is embodied 
 in the following pages. I have, moreover, read 
 and heard a good deal since, which, for con- 
 venience's sake, I will incorporate here instead 
 of making separate footnotes. 
 
 " You heard the whole of them last ni^ht," 
 Ferrari said next morning ; " you heard the 
 whole of them talking last night about France's 
 alliances. There is not a word of truth in the 
 statements of either of the parties. There is 
 not a single treaty to that effect deposited in 
 the archives of the Ministere des Affaires 
 Etrangeres, nor have any negotiations fallen 
 through. Both Austria and Italy — Napoleon's 
 main dependence — are playing a waiting game ; 
 if you want it more plainly, both Nigra and 
 Metternich are leading the Emperor and 
 Gramont by the nose. It would not be very 
 difficult to do this in the case of the latter 
 under any circumstances ; it would be more diffi- 
 cult with the Emperor, but for his excruciating 
 disease, which leaves him rest neither night nor 
 day except under the influence of morphia, and 
 I defy the most clear-headed intellect t<> work 
 out a problem or to pursue even its own thoughts 
 under such conditions. Except Conneau and a 
 few doctors, no one suspects how ill lie really
 
 I NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 »r your Napoleon, whom I like nearly as 
 much as your uncles did, is a real man of 
 It' he were not as ill as he is, he 
 might become alive to the fact that just now 
 those Rhine provinces which are fundamentally 
 the sole cause of the mischief, are unattainable, 
 or at any rate not attainable by the means 
 he proposes to employ, namely, by attacking 
 Prussia and by inviting Austria and Italy to 
 help him. 
 
 • I<> begin with, Austria and Italy will not, 
 cannot, and dare not help France. Let me 
 explain to you why. 
 
 • I will leave Italy aside for a moment. In 
 the first place because such aid as she may be 
 able to afford France will be almost worthless 
 without the equally active co-operation of Austria. 
 In order to be of any use at all, Italy would have to 
 call out at least 100,000 troops, and in her present 
 stat<- of military organisation it would take her at 
 • six or seven weeks to do this. That is, if 
 th<- two burning questions, those of the temporal 
 
 reignty of the Papacy and the occupation of 
 Rome, had been satisfactorily settled to the 
 advantage of I tab- beforehand. Without that. 
 I tell you, there is not the remotest chance of 
 Italy stirring a finger. I know my country 
 better than the Emperor, and feel positive that, 
 if Victor Emmanuel attempted to mobilise his 
 army without that stipulation — and mind, a public
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 383 
 
 not a secret stipulation — his army, much as it 
 loves him, would refuse to move at his bidding, 
 supposing it did not stir against him. Our states- 
 men at the risk of being taxed with ingratitude 
 say to themselves, ' Italy's position with regard 
 to her unification — read with regard to the 
 possession of Rome — would not be improved 
 by the victory of France over Prussia; it would 
 be materially improved by a defeat of France, 
 or even by a drawn campaign, which would 
 necessarily lead to a Congress.' This, I own, 
 is black ingratitude, but I am not responsible 
 for it, and if I were, I would follow the tactics 
 of Lanza or of whomsoever stood in his place. 
 
 " Granted, however, that all these difficulties 
 were satisfactorily removed offhand, I repeat, it 
 would take, then, six weeks to mobilise 100,000 
 troops, which, if Austria still held aloof by that 
 time, would have to be directed on to Lyons and 
 have to cross a great part of France by rail. 
 By then, take my word for it, the issue of the 
 struggle would have been virtually decided, [f 
 France be able to hold her own single-handed 
 for six or seven weeks after the real outbreak 
 of the war, she will be able to do so afterwards, 
 and will need no help from any one — provided she 
 interprets the words ' holding her own ' in their 
 most literal sense. If she attempts territorial 
 aggrandisement — the territorial aggrandisement 
 Napoleon has been dreaming of for years—
 
 i NDERCURRENTS ( >F 
 
 io matter what specious title, she will 
 tically make a scourge for her own hack, 
 
 in spite of Napoleon's hare-brained theories 
 on the subject, the South German States want 
 none of his protection against Prussia ; and 
 if the) do not rally around her now, they 
 would rally round her then, and what is more, 
 Austria, who is wavering now, and who, like Italy, 
 is waiting to see how the cat jumps, would 
 waver no longer. Austria's love, like Juliet's, 
 would spring trom her only hate. She would 
 cue to see Wiirtemberg and Bavaria 
 under French protection or allied to France, for 
 in such conditions Baden would scarcely prove 
 an obstacle to an otherwise unhindered march 
 of the French into Bohemia. Austria has had 
 enough of that kind of thing under Napoleon's 
 uncle."' 
 
 " Then why those drafts of projected treaties 
 at the existence of which you yourself hinted ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Did not I tell you that both Austria and 
 Italy are waiting to see how the cat jumps ? If 
 those drafts exist, and I feel certain of the 
 ■nee of one, and nearly certain of the exist- 
 of the other, then final execution, I mean 
 the signing of them by the three contracting 
 parties, would still be dependent on so many con- 
 ditions that at the last moment one or both ol 
 France's contemplated allies might find a pretext
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 385 
 
 for retreat. Do not lose si^ht of the following 
 facts, Austria will not act without Italy. That 
 is no surmise on my part, but an ascertained 
 fact. Austria is, moreover, a Catholic power, 
 and as such determined to maintain the tem- 
 poral sovereignty of the Papacy which Italy 
 is equally determined to destroy. If you had 
 been here during the last six months instead 
 of in England, you would have noticed a gradual 
 change of Emile Ollivier's attitude with regard to 
 Rome. The Premier, who is also Minister of 
 Justice and Public Worship, conveniently forgot 
 in this instance that Emile Ollivier as a mem- 
 ber of the Opposition quintet of the Empire 
 constantly claimed Rome for the Romans, that is, 
 for Italy. This alone would prove to me beyond 
 a doubt that Ollivier is a better statesman 
 than his present colleague Gramont, or than the 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs with whom Ollivier 
 inaugurated his ministerial career. That poor 
 Count Napoleon Daru. He was as fit to take 
 the head of Foreign Affairs, even if it had been 
 all smooth sailing, as the captain of one of your 
 saloon steamers on the Thames is fit to take the 
 command of the Channel Fleet. I do not know, 
 though, which of the two is worse ; he, I >aru, who 
 would have let the vessel of the State drift on the 
 rocks, signalling for help all the while ; or ( rra 
 mont, who does not know whence the wind Mews 
 and steers the ship right on a sandbank, confidenl 
 
 c c
 
 I MM R.CURR1 N rS OF 
 
 while of help to take him off, which help 
 
 v er come. 
 Added to this; notwithstanding the pacific 
 sentiments with which ( >llivier is credited, he 
 
 rated knowingly in the acceleration of this 
 war which du reste was inevitable at some future 
 period remote or near, as long as Napoleon would 
 not give up his senseless pretensions to those 
 Rhenish provinces. 1 But," and here he took 
 out his watch. " I have outstayed my time ; I 
 ill see you again by and bye, and will tell you 
 m< 
 
 With which he left me to my own devices and 
 reflections. The former were few, the latter 
 many. Under different circumstances, I should 
 have looked-up my French acquaintances. After 
 .in absence of more than a twelvemonth, I should 
 have had a friendly welcome, albeit that during 
 that twelvemonth not one had probably given a 
 thought to me. The Parisian character is essen- 
 
 1 How absolutely correct Ferrari's views were in this respect 
 
 proved by an extract from a letter of M. Georges Le Sourd, 
 
 the French Charge" d'Affaires in the absence of Count Benedetti, 
 
 just before the outbreak of the War. " 13th July. The news that the 
 
 candidature was withdrawn, spread here at ten o'clock last night. 
 
 marck arrived from Yarzin at six ; he intends to start for Ems 
 
 this morning. He has communicated the withdrawal to the Italian 
 
 Minister ; he will return to Varzin to-morrow. There is an end of 
 
 the incident then, but security is by no means restored, and the 
 
 game has probably only been deferred. One feels almost disposed 
 
 to regret a solution which adjourns a war in which we should have 
 
 I under excellent conditions, always provided that we 
 
 The Italics are not mine.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 387 
 
 tially constituted in this way. " Out of sight, out of 
 mind." But I felt uncertain of my reception in 
 the present state of affairs, so I made up my 
 mind to have luncheon by myself, and to wander 
 about the streets in the afternoon. Half an hour 
 later, I felt glad at my decision. My uncles and 
 I had frequently dined at the Faisan Dore in the 
 Rue des Martyrs on our way to the Rue de la 
 Tour d'Auvergne, where there was a curious little 
 playhouse managed by M. Charles Boudeville, of 
 whom I have spoken in a former book. As I grew 
 up, I lunched there now and again when the state 
 of my purse would run to it, and when the fare of 
 the Brasserie des Martyrs next door, or Dino- 
 chaux's hard by in the Rue Breda was not to 
 my taste. Consequently, I was not altogether a 
 stranger there. I might have been for all the 
 notice I got on my entering the establishment, 
 from the principal clown to the cashier and the 
 waiters, all of whom had seen me but a twelve- 
 month before. On the 13th or 14th July, I 
 should probably have had a sign of recognition 
 and a smile from every one ; on the 1 6th I had 
 become an alien and an enemy to France, 
 perhaps a spy. I have never set foot in the 
 Faisan Dore since, though for five years I 
 had to pass its doors twice a day to go and eat 
 elsewhere. 
 
 I ate my meal in silence, notwithstanding the 
 familiar faces of several of the customers, for the 
 
 c c 2
 
 UNDERCURREN rS 0] 
 
 of the Faison Dor^ was chiefly made up 
 
 I went out, and at the corner ol 
 
 Faubourg Montmartre ran against my friend 
 
 Ktfrner. 1 " I am glad I have met you before I 
 
 he said, holding out his hand ; " let us have 
 stirrup cup, if it be only the stirrup cup of 
 he laughed, no doubt in allusion to my 
 il habits in the way of liquor. 
 But I thought that in virtue of certain laws 
 you were exempt from military service." I 
 remarked when we were seated. 
 "So 1 am," he answered. 
 
 " Then you are going to join as a volunteer ?" 
 He looked amazed. " I am not going as a 
 volunteer at all. I was born in Paris, that's true, 
 but I am too German to fight on the side of the 
 French, and too conscientious to fight against 
 them. So I am going to Brussels." Then he 
 stopped, but in another moment he went on. 
 •• Practically, this is the doing of the French 
 themselves, who maintain that men of German 
 blood, even if born in France, can never be- 
 come Frenchmen. They are right ; nevertheless, 
 I should have stayed here to await events if the 
 manager of the bank had not dismissed me 
 yesterday morning without rhyme or reason 
 apparently. ' You had better be gone, mon- 
 sieur.' he said. ' I cannot have you here. Your 
 
 1 Sec My Paris Note-book, ch. iv., p. 115 of the English 
 Edition.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 389 
 
 fellow-clerks would make life intolerable to you.' 
 With this he handed me a voucher for a month's 
 salary. I went home somewhat crestfallen, I 
 own. On the doorstep I was met by my con- 
 cierge. ' Monsieur,' she whispered, ' the pro- 
 prietor has asked me to tell you to remove your 
 furniture as soon as possible, and yourself with 
 it. He will make you a present of the quarter's 
 rent that has begun. It is not his fault, perhaps. 
 This morning, after you were gone, the tenants 
 came down in a body, and swore that, if you were 
 not out of the house in forty-eight hours, they 
 would be, and the proprietor might fish for his rent.' 
 ' But, madame,' I remonstrated, ' I was born 
 and bred in this house ; my mother, father, and 
 grandfather died here. Where am I to go ? ' 
 ' Ah, ca,' she replied, shrugging her shoulders as 
 only a Frenchwoman can, "9a ne me regarde pas.' 
 And she went on with her sweeping ; which 
 indifference did not prevent her from accepting 
 fifty francs this morning under the following 
 circumstances. As you know, my grandfather 
 died in January, and I felt very lonely in this large 
 flat by myself. I thought of giving it up, and, in 
 fact, gave notice to that effect at the end of the 
 March quarter. About six weeks ago I became 
 engaged, and the flat not being let, I decided to 
 keep it on. You know that I am not altogether 
 dependent on my salary at the bank. II all had 
 gone well, I should have been married b) the end
 
 I NDERCURRENTS I >F 
 
 of the month. I went straight to my intended's 
 its to tell them what had happened ; before 1 
 could open my lips, my fiancee's lather informed 
 me that my engagement was broken off. There 
 was a lot o\ high falutin' about the enemies 
 to his country. I did not take the trouble to 
 answer him, and turned on my heel. But 
 there I was with a houseful of furniture on 
 my hands, and nowhere to put it, for I knew 
 that if I did not shift it within forty-eight hours it 
 would be flung into the street, and I knew, 
 equally, that it would be of no use to appeal to the 
 law at this moment. Three people to whom I 
 successively applied to move and store it refused. 
 They virtually gave me the same answer. They 
 were not going to help a German to get his 
 chattels away, and as for storing it, they would 
 not be defiled by the furniture's contact. I went 
 to a fourth to try and sell it. The answer was the 
 same. The concierge has sold it for me ; she said 
 it was left for rent. At a rough guess it is worth 
 about 4,000 frs., for it was all very good and solid. 
 I got 900 frs. for it, out of which I gave the 
 < 1 'iicierge 50 frs." 
 
 In the evening I told Ferrari the story. " That's 
 just it," he laughed. " Napoleon, with his ridi- 
 culous theory of nationalities, pretends that the 
 mere fact of annexing them would convert those 
 nans on the left bank of the Rhine into 
 Frenchmen when two centuries of French rule,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 391 
 
 and by no means stringent rule has failed to do 
 so in the case of the Alsatians. Look at the 
 Irish in America and the French in Canada, they 
 have remained Irish and French in spite of 
 everything. There is a French colony in Berlin 
 which dates from the revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes. Well, in spite of their identity of 
 religion, the descendants of those Frenchmen 
 have remained French. The messages of their 
 Consistory are still drawn up in French, their 
 food is French, the houses built by the adminis- 
 tration of the colony have French inscriptions — 
 " Fondation de l'Eglise du Refuge." What 
 about Nice and Savoy ? The inhabitants of these 
 countries have, roughly speaking, a common 
 origin with the French of these parts. That is 
 why they have amalgamated without great diffi- 
 culty. But all this is of a piece with Napoleon's 
 dream of turning Austria, the persistent enemy of 
 France, into her friend. Henri IV. and Richelieu, 
 who were as good politicians as the son of Hor- 
 tense, looked at Austria in that light. But Austria 
 is clever, and hating France, as she does and 
 always did, does not mind making a cat's-paw of 
 her. Marie Therese sends Kaunitz to the Pompa- 
 dour, and the latter inveigles Louis XV. into the 
 Seven Years' War. It is the Pompadour's revenge 
 on the great Frederick, who had called her un 
 complimentary names. Francis Joseph sends 
 M. and Mdme. de Metternich to Eugenie, who
 
 I NDERI l RREN rs I »i 
 
 her husband into a war with Prussia 
 which she calls " ma guere, a moi," for Napoleon, 
 
 pite of those confounded Rhine provinces, 
 
 would probably have continued to trust to his 
 
 sinuous policy to get them. Why the Emperor 
 
 should persist in regarding Austria as a friend 
 
 my comprehension, and why he should 
 
 rine that Austria looks upon France in a 
 friendly light is still more puzzling to me. Marie 
 Louise, the consort of the greatest man that ever 
 lived, shakes the dust of France from off her feet 
 
 moment she can; she leaves her son to the 
 tender mercies of her father and old Metternich ; 
 on the evening of the day she learns the news of 
 Napoleon the Great's death she goes to the 
 theatre as if nothing had happened. Automarchi, 
 who comes to tell her of the hero's death, is not 
 even received by her. The Due de Reichstadt is 
 practically sequestrated, and his grandfather sanc- 
 tions all the questionable proceedings of his 
 mother with regard to him. Now look at the 
 other side. Marie Antoinette is murdered in 
 France, the first Napoleon simply treads Austria 
 under foot, and when he marries one of her 
 (laughters still conspires against her (against 
 Austria) ; Napoleon's nephew despoils Austria in 
 Italy. In the day of Austria's trouble with Prussia, 
 he leaves Austria to face that trouble by herself, al- 
 though his policy dictates to him a different course; 
 the death of Maximilian, the madness of Maxi-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 393 
 
 milian's wife are virtually Louis Napoleon's 
 doings. Notwithstanding all this he is befooled 
 by Francis Joseph and Metternich fits, on the 
 strength of a few sheets of paper which are not 
 even signed, for these sheets of paper do exist, 
 although in due time, if it suits her, Austria will 
 deny this. 1 But even if they were signed they 
 would be no good, as Andrassy warned the 
 Emperor as early as three years ago. ' Permit 
 me to observe to your Majesty,' he said at 
 Salzburg, ' that a treaty only counts in propor- 
 tion to its possibility of execution ; and I can 
 guarantee your Majesty that Hungary will never 
 allow Austria to make war upon Prussia.' I can 
 only ascribe Napoleon's blindness to the desperate 
 state of his health ; for as far as I can see, unless 
 a miracle save both, he is leading France and 
 himself to headlong destruction. 
 
 " That he is very ill there is not the least 
 doubt. In a consultation held a fortnight ago 
 between six of the most eminent medical men of 
 France, it was considered necessary to proceed 
 immediately to an operation. But Nelaton 
 shirked the responsibility, owing to his want of 
 success with Niel last year. And now it is 
 too late." 
 
 These are but a few of Ferrari's prognosti- 
 
 1 Ferrari spoke prophetically. Austria did deny the exi 
 •of those draft treaties a few years later on, and when the I mpre 
 wished to refute the falsehood by producing the documents, thej 
 
 had disappeared from Chislehurst.
 
 I NDERCURREN is 01 
 
 cations. N t, In spite of these, the terribly 
 crushing defeats of Reichshofen, \\ T oerth, Beau- 
 mont and Sedan were surprising to me, but 
 when I landed again in Paris on the afternoon of 
 the 3rd September, I was fully prepared for the 
 overthrow o\ the Empire. 
 
 As I have already said, I learnt a good deal 
 during the three weeks that went by between the 
 declaration of the war and the battle of Woerth ; 
 irnt still more after this disastrous engage- 
 ment, and until the final collapse of the French 
 army on the banks of the Meuse. The whole of 
 this information and observation led to one and 
 only one conclusion in my mind ; namely, that the 
 Empire could and probably would have been saved 
 by Napoleon III.'s presence in Paris. Hence, I 
 distinctly charge those who prevented his return 
 thither with the whole responsibility of the fall 
 of the dynasty. The motives for keeping the 
 Emperor away from the capital have been set 
 lorth elsewhere ; ! I may be obliged to re-enume- 
 rate them here. I shall be told that, ill as he was, 
 Napoleon III. could not have lifted a finger to 
 avert the re volution of the 4th September, 1870. 
 My answer is simply this. If Napoleon III. was 
 too ill to direct affairs from the Tuileries, he was 
 certainly too ill to assume the command of the 
 army at the outset of the campaign, and to drag 
 
 1 An Englishman in Paris, vol. ii., chs. 9 & 10. London : 
 Chapman and Hall. 1892.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 39$ 
 
 at the heels of the army in no capacity whatever 
 after Woerth. If a rejoinder be forthcoming at 
 all, which is extremely doubtful, it will probably 
 be couched as follows : " Had the Empress been 
 aware of her husband's critical state of health, she 
 would not have allowed him to go, least of all 
 incited him to go." Granted, however, that the 
 Empress was ignorant of the consultation held on 
 the ist July, 1870, between six of the greatest 
 medical authorities in France — and to dispute 
 this ignorance would be practically framing an 
 indictment against her, the seriousness of which 
 would appal even me 1 — she could not have 
 remained ignorant of the Emperor's condition 
 after his departure for the seat of war on the 28th 
 July, assuming that she was blind to it on that 
 day. For even the least observant were struck 
 by his haggard appearance as he walked between 
 his wife and son along the platform of the private 
 station in the park of Saint-Cloud to take his seat 
 in the train. Dr. Germain See, the only doctor 
 who signed the report of the consultation referred 
 to, stated after 1870 that at his urgent request a 
 young but exceedingly skilful surgeon accom- 
 panied the Emperor, and that this young prac- 
 titioner was provided with all the appliances to 
 perform an immediate operation should still 
 graver symptoms than those which had prompted 
 
 1 M. Jules Richard, one of the staunchest Imperialists, and an 
 
 exceedingly talented writer, has done this.
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 the consultation render such an operation neces- 
 
 ry. rhe presence of this stranger among them 
 must have given rise to questions on the part of 
 
 me <>f the entourage of the Emperor. The spy- 
 re. though affecting the educated less violently 
 than the masses, was doing its work among the 
 former then. Did these questions remain un- 
 answered ? If so, Dr. See's locum tenens would 
 have been arrested there and then, and taken 
 back to Paris under a strong escort. 
 
 For the sake of argument we will admit that in 
 the bustle and intense excitement of that moment, 
 his presence was overlooked, or if not overlooked, 
 not commented upon then. Could this have been 
 the case while the Imperial train was rolling to- 
 wards Metz ? And what about the fact that the 
 Emperor had to be lifted bodily out of his saddle, 
 after Saarbruck, viz., on the 2nd August ? Are 
 we to believe that Lebceuf and Lebrun, who per- 
 formed the painful task, also said nothing of this 
 to any one. It would be taxing one's credulity 
 too much. More than twenty-six years have 
 
 »sed since that day, and notwithstanding all the 
 documents that have come to light, it is very diffi- 
 cult to minimise the blame attached to Lebceufs 
 name in connection with the initial phases of the 
 I ranco German war ; yet, it is certain that he did 
 not overrate the importance from a French point 
 of view of the piece of theatrical display, known 
 to the world at large as " the fire-baptism of the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 397 
 
 Prince Imperial." It is equally certain that what- 
 ever the mistakes committed by Lebceuf at the 
 outset, he was thoroughly alive to the demoralis- 
 ing effects of the presence of a mentally unhinged 
 and physically unfit chief upon an army like the 
 French one. There is proof that between the 
 2nd and 6th August, he gave unmistakable hints 
 to the Emperor himself of this danger. Whether 
 Napoleon had made up his mind not to return to 
 Paris until after a more signal victory than Saar- 
 bruck, or whether the Empress, afraid of such a 
 return, had virtually nipped the idea of it in the 
 bud will, perhaps, never be accurately known ; 
 the presumption, though, is in favour of the latter 
 theory. But after Forbach, and especially after 
 Woerth, the Emperor distinctly declined to follow 
 the openly expressed advice of Lebceuf. While 
 acknowledging that his state of health did not 
 allow of his placing himself at the head of his 
 troops, he said that he could not relinquish the 
 command with the humiliation of two defeats 
 fresh upon him. 
 
 Curiously enough, this one remark of the Em- 
 peror is repeated almost word for word in a 
 telegram from the Empress to him on the 7th 
 August ; on which day M. Francheschini Pietri, 
 the Emperor's private secretary, took or appeared 
 to take a personal initiative, and in a confidential 
 despatch informed the Empress of Leboeuf's views 
 as to the expedience of the Emperor's return to
 
 i NDERCI RREN rS I >F 
 
 lital "In the event of another reverse 
 
 i the Emperor would, at any rate, not 
 
 the responsibility o\ it. This is also the 
 
 opinion n\ the true friends of the Emperor" ; he 
 
 To which message the Empress replied, 
 
 •■I have received Pietri's despatch. Have you 
 
 considered all the consequences of your return to 
 
 i ith the blow of two reverses fresh zipon 
 
 (The italics are mine.) " As for me," 
 
 went on to say, " I dare not take the 
 
 ►risibility of advising you. But if you make 
 
 up your mind to the step, it should, at any rate 
 
 presented to the country as provisional. 
 
 The Emperor must come back to Paris to re- 
 
 nise the Second Army, transferring the chief 
 
 command of the Army of the Rhine, meanwhile, 
 
 and only for the time being, to Bazaine." 
 
 The likeness between the main sentence of the 
 Emperor's answer to Leboeuf and that of the 
 Empress 1 telegram seems almost too great to be 
 the result of pure accident or even of the pre- 
 dominance of the self-same thought in two minds, 
 cannot help suspecting that the one sentence 
 is the echo of the other. And if we admit this, 
 there can be no doubt as to which was the voice 
 and which the echo. The Emperor suggesting 
 either personally or vicariously his return to Paris 
 would not have courted a lukewarm assent to, 
 and least of all a categorical disapproval of, the 
 proposed step by a galling reference to the moral
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 399 
 
 effects of two fresh defeats. We may, therefore, 
 take it that when he made use of these words, he 
 was repeating those of his consort, with the sen- 
 timent of which he, perhaps, agreed in the main. 
 This, again, would lead one to conclude that the 
 Emperor's return to Paris was the subject of 
 more than one conversation on that memorable 
 7th August, viz., the day after the terrible re- 
 verses at Woerth and the almost entire anni- 
 hilation of the six regiments of cuirassiers at 
 Morsbronn and Reichshofen. It is not difficult to 
 surmise what happened between the Emperor and 
 Lebceuf on the morning after MacMahon's dearly 
 bought retreat on Froeschwiller. The marshal's 
 hints of the last four days as to the advisability of 
 the Emperor relinquishing the command and re- 
 turning to Paris became more pressing, and 
 probably took the shape of a frankly though re- 
 spectfully expressed request. There is no reason 
 to think that the Emperor's inherently vacillating 
 disposition, which had increased of late years in 
 consequence of his excruciating pains, had sud- 
 denly changed into firmness of purpose amidst the 
 anxiety and consternation of the critical events 
 fast succeeding each other ; and the presumption 
 is that while agreeing partly or in toto with 
 Lebceuf, he felt unable to arrive at a decision. 
 •' It is certain my belief increases infinitely the 
 moment I can convince another mind thereof," 
 remarks Novalis (Hardenberg). At this moment
 
 I NDERCURREN l> OF 
 
 »r was casting about for some one to 
 •\ his scarcel) self-acknowledged desire to 
 return u» the Tuileries. But this "someone" 
 had to be the elect of his heart rather than the elect 
 of his brain, for, as I have endeavoured to show 
 or twice, Napoleon III. more often allowed 
 himself to be guided in his judgments by those 
 whom he loved than by those whom he esteemed, 
 and of the tenner there was no one near him but 
 his sen and his cousin, the one a mere lad, the 
 other an unquestionably safe adviser in politically 
 critical circumstances where his personal interest 
 was not directly at stake, and therefore a presum- 
 ably sincere one at this particular juncture. Un- 
 fortunately for the Emperor, Prince Napoleon was 
 known to be as bitterly opposed to the interference 
 of the Empress in public affairs as Persigny, who 
 then in disgrace for having too frankly ex- 
 iiis views on the subject some time before, 
 in a memoir which caused much heartburning and 
 animosity. The Empress had not been slow to 
 embitter the situation, and she, it must be borne 
 in mind, was at this instant virtually the ruler of 
 France. Besides, albeit that the Emperor loved 
 his cousin and Persigny not less, he certainly loved 
 the Empress more. Those who have not taken 
 sufficient cognisance of this fact throughout the 
 • this book will have absolutely read it in 
 vain. During the whole of the reign there were 
 only two men whose influence over the Emperor
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 401 
 
 did not give umbrage to the Empress, and whose, 
 perhaps, equally great though not quite so visible 
 influence over the Empress did not irritate the 
 Emperor. These two men were Mocquard 
 and Fleury. The one was dead, the other too 
 far away to be available for instantaneous 
 counsel. 
 
 The first conversation with Lebceuf in the early 
 part of the morning produced no result then, as 
 far as the relinquishing of the Emperor's com- 
 mand and his return to Paris were concerned. 
 But though not productive of a result, it produced 
 a germ which might have developed into a result, 
 if Fleury had been at the Emperor's elbow to take 
 up Lebceuf's argument, to the effect that there 
 were still twenty divisions left intact with which 
 Frossard, in spite of his defeat, might attack the 
 scarcely-formed armies of Steinmetz and the Red 
 Prince and prevent their junction. I say Fleury, 
 because I know of no one else who could have 
 performed the task ; and lest my estimate of the 
 man's powers should seem exaggerated, I would 
 refer the reader to the frequent testimonies given 
 by Alexander II. with regard to the confidence 
 and affection with which Fleury inspired every 
 one around him. The Martyr-Tzar did not hesi- 
 tate to say subsequently that if Fleury's high sense 
 of a soldier's duty had not prompted him to leave 
 St. Petersburg, the sequel to Sedan, in spite of 
 the Tzar's relationship to and veneration for the 
 
 i) i)
 
 i NDERCURRENTS OF 
 conqueror might have been different to what 
 
 it w.is. 
 
 In default of this much-needed presence, the 
 Emperor relapsed immediately after Lebceufs 
 departure into his by this time chronic state of 
 vacillation, aggravated no doubt by his acute suf- 
 ferings. There is every reason to believe that M. 
 Francheschini Pietri was as loyal and devoted a 
 servant as any ; that he failed to command the Em- 
 peror's entire confidence at this particular moment 
 was not his fault, but the fault of his master's pecu- 
 liar temperament. It boots little to inquire whether 
 he sent the telegram solely on his own responsibility 
 or was guided in its despatch bya mere remark from 
 the Emperor or even a mere sign in the generally 
 impenetrable face. In either case, the Empress' 
 answer to it would have been the same. She did 
 not want the Emperor in Paris (the italics are 
 mine), because his being there would have pre- 
 vented the overthrow of M. Emile Ollivier, upon 
 which she had set her heart. Lest this should be 
 disputed by those who are so fond of taking me to 
 task. I beg to quote the unguarded confession of 
 no less a personage than the late Jules Simon. 
 • We succeeded without difficulty in overthrowing 
 1 Government, because all the different parties, 
 even the Coui't party, were our auxiliaries." 
 
 The why and wherefore of this dislike of Emile 
 Ollivier on the part of the Empress need not be 
 repeated here. If it be argued that in such a
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 403 
 
 supreme crisis a woman imbued with the slightest 
 knowledge of the magnitude of the interests that 
 were at stake would have forgone her private 
 resentment or would, at any rate, have tempor- 
 arily stifled its promptings, I can only answer that 
 at no time during her husband's reign or after- 
 wards did the Empress grasp the full or even 
 the partial significance of the political part she 
 aspired to play ; at no time did she forgo the 
 gratification of a private resentment. If proofs 
 are asked for, I will give them, but in my own 
 way — i.e., forward them to any newspaper in the 
 kingdom that will consent to print them. These 
 very small documents will be forthcoming by the 
 dozen, and be authenticated in every instance by 
 names the bearers of which were and are famed 
 for their loyalty to the fallen dynasty. 
 
 Nor will it be difficult to prove by somewhat 
 more ample evidence, which on that account can- 
 not find a place at the end of a book, that the 
 gratification of private resentment was, at that 
 moment, only a secondary motive for the desired 
 overthrow of M. Ollivier. But the Empress and 
 her "party" — the clique had grown into a party, 
 or at all events fancied itself to be such— were 
 thoroughly aware that the Emperor would nol 
 lend himself to such proceedings, that, in fact, li<' 
 had had to a certain extent a foreboding of tl 
 machinations and endeavoured to guard against 
 them in the " letters patent" which conferred upon 
 
 i) i) 2
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 the Empress the regency she had coveted for so 
 mam years, by withholding from her the power to 
 summon parliament. She summoned the parlia- 
 ment in spite oi this, and the Emperor, notwith- 
 standing his exceedingly great love for her, never 
 forgave her. 1 
 
 This is why the Emperor had to be and was 
 kept out of Paris by shifts, prevarications and 
 direct falsehoods, imposing upon the majority of 
 the nation to a much greater degree than upon 
 him. albeit that he himself did not seriously 
 suspect, if he ever conceived at all, the final 
 result aimed at in this ostracism, namely, his 
 abdication in favour of his son with the Empress 
 as regent for at least the next three years — 
 which step would have been cavalierly proposed 
 to, nay, perhaps brutally forced upon him in the 
 event of one single French victory, 2 in the 
 
 1 For the better understanding of all this, I must refer the reader 
 to An Englishman in Pan's, vol. ii., chs. 9 and 10. 
 
 - I am writing this practically from memory, the printers are 
 waiting for copy, and my notes on this particular month are in- 
 accessible from where I write. I am, however, absolutely certain 
 that the statement referring to the abdication emanated from M. 
 Rouher, not in the form, perhaps, in which I have set it down, for 
 he was too guarded to have been so thoroughly outspoken, but both 
 in substance and spirit. The reason why I have printed it is that it 
 ''tones down" to a certain extent a much graver charge against 
 the Empress' party preferred in An Englishmariin Paiis, although 
 it does not altogether disprove it. I am quite willing to believe 
 that the coterie would have been content with abdication, but they 
 would have preferred the stray bullet for which some openly wished 
 to end the difficulty. But 1 cannot give many footnotes ; firstly, 
 for the reason just mentioned ; secondly because the requisite 
 number would swell the volume to an inordinate size.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 405 
 
 possibility of which the Empress still believed. 
 This belief of the Empress was, however, not 
 founded on more or less encouraging reports or 
 hopeful messages from the seat of war, but 
 on signs, tokens, prognostications, warnings, 
 miraculous apparitions, cock and bull stories told 
 to her by her entourage, and similar childish 
 and senseless methods for blinking the truth. 
 Charles X. going to Rambouillet to shoot in the 
 latter days of July, 1830, on the strength of a 
 vision which had told him that everything would 
 come right, was not more blind than she. In 
 fact, both minds belong to the same category. 
 I repeat, I have not my notes at hand ; if I 
 had, I could not avail myself of them in every 
 small instance, but I remember perfectly well one 
 of my relatives coming home one day and telling 
 us that the Empress had fainted on the previous 
 night in her husband's arms, because that 
 charlatan Home had predicted from the stars 
 that the Prince Imperial would not sit on the 
 throne of his father. Among the papers found at 
 the Tuileries after the 4th September, there was 
 the rough copy of a telegram the Empress had 
 addressed to the Prince Imperial on the 31st July 
 (three days after his departure) to the effect that 
 the little girl of the Duchesse de Malakoff had 
 found another couple of four-leaved shamrocks 
 which she, the Empress, would send to him. In 
 1873, after the Emperor's death, when the
 
 UNDERCURREN L'S OF 
 
 ration of the Comic de Chambord was in 
 the wind, the patience of M. Rouher — the then 
 acknowledged leader of the Imperialist party — was 
 often put to a severe test by the tendency of the 
 ex-Empress to give partial or entire credence to 
 the most absurd fabrications of some of her 
 former courtiers. They regretted the loaves and 
 fishes ^( the Empire much more than the Empire 
 itself, and accused M. Rouher of lukewarmness, 
 dilatoriness, and especially want of courage in 
 not cutting the crrass from under the feet of the 
 Duchesse de Bern's son. In one instance they 
 announced to the Empress that they had found 
 a soi-disant military chief who had been at work 
 among the Paris and Versailles garrisons, which 
 ready to besiege the Government in the 
 r place. In another instance, in order to 
 justify their contemplated desertion of the Im- 
 perial cause, should the Monarchical one prove 
 successful, they invented (absolutely invented) an 
 influential member of the Society of Jesus, who 
 offered the Empress the mediation of Pius IX. 
 with the future Henri V. to make the latter adopt 
 the Prince Imperial as his heir. 
 
 I am not prepared to say that the Empress was 
 entirely taken in by these so-called projects, but 
 she was unquestionably fascinated by them, and 
 M. Rouher had to stand the brunt of their 
 discussion till he was positively weary. 
 
 If such was the credulity of the Empress in
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 407 
 
 1873, amidst the comparative calm after a three 
 years' old and either apparently final or possibly 
 retrievable defeat, I need not waste the reader's 
 time and mine by a description of her state of 
 mind during the whole of August, 1870, with her 
 entourage giving its advice whether asked or not, 
 but all or nearly all insisting that the Emperor's 
 return to Paris as the living, breathing image of 
 France's military reverses must be prevented at 
 all costs. And lest there should perchance arise 
 among the people a feeling of pity for the sove- 
 reign and the man to whom, after all, the nation 
 owed eighteen years of unparalleled prosperity, the 
 excruciating condition of this man's health was 
 either carefully concealed from the public at large, 
 or when this was impossible represented as 
 calling for no immediate anxiety. There was, 
 however, one Minister who in spite of his culpable 
 weakness at the outset of the Hohenzollern 
 imbroglio, or perhaps because of his knowledge 
 of this weakness, refused to have the nation 
 hoodwinked in this way. This was M. Emile 
 Ollivier. It would not do, perhaps, to dissociate 
 his political from his personal motives, or to 
 analyse either au fond; but by now, one thing 
 is indisputably certain. M. Ollivier perceived 
 plainly that the absence of the Emperor consti- 
 tuted a greater danger to his dynasty than his 
 presence. And I am not far wrong in saying
 
 UND1 RCURRENTS OF 
 
 that of all these whom the Emperor had lifted 
 from deserved or undeserved obscurity he was, 
 perhaps, the onl) cue who was moved to sincere 
 and drop compassion at the cruel fate of the 
 eigrn to whom most of the others as late 
 as three months before: that date had proffered 
 lip-service in profusion ; that he was, perhaps, 
 only one who refused to avail himself of the 
 convenient and comforting formula that "the 
 sovereign who allows himself to be ousted from 
 his throne fails in all the oaths of allegiance that 
 have been sworn to him. This formula, paraphrased 
 from Rivarol s " You did not wish to be my 
 king, I refuse to be your subject," was not likely 
 to appeal to M. Ollivier, for misguided in many 
 things though he may have been, he was and 
 is of an essentially loyal and sympathetic nature. 
 The wish to remain in power in order to repair, 
 if possible, the mistakes of the beginning, for 
 which, after all is said and done, he was only 
 partially responsible, inasmuch as neither the 
 army nor the generals who conducted or miscon- 
 ducted its operations, were of his choosing, still 
 of his making, this wish to retrieve the for- 
 tunes of the liberal and constitutional Empire may 
 have had something to do with his determination 
 to have the Emperor back ; but there is ample 
 evidence from the man's private character, that 
 the bodily and mental sufferings of the monarch,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 409 
 
 exiled by those who reigned in his name and in 
 virtue of the powers conferred by him, influenced 
 his Minister's attitude to an equal extent. 
 
 To this determination and attitude the Empress 
 and her clique felt in a measure bound to op- 
 pose something less arbitrary than a merely 
 obstinate and logically indefensible uon-possuuius ; 
 but their combined ingenuity went no further than 
 the adoption of a device which, though it fairly 
 surprised M. Ollivier by its brazenness, was 
 simplicity itself. Almost immediately after the 
 receipt of Pietri's telegram and the Empress' 
 reply to it, M. Maurice Richard, the head of the 
 Arts Department at the Ministry of Public 
 Education, was despatched to Metz. To what 
 end ? Ostensibly, to satisfy the Prime Minister's 
 apprehensions, i.e., to inquire into the state of 
 health of the Emperor and to ascertain the degree 
 of confidence with which he inspired the troops, 
 just as if both these points were not by then as 
 clear as the sun at noon on a summer's day. 
 But although there was little capacity among the 
 entourage of the Empress, there was a good 
 deal of cunning, and their main object was to 
 show that the Minister's wishes had been complied 
 with, that his fall, which they were preparing, 
 was not due to them but to a want of confidence 
 of the Chamber. In reality, M. Richard wa 
 spatched to deny by implication all the rumours 
 that had been circulated. He justified the con-
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 fidence placed in him, for when at the Cabinet 
 Council held on the early morning of the 9th 
 August, M. Ollivier brought tint question of the 
 Emperor's return before his colleagues, and 
 appealed to M, Richard, who had come back 
 late on the previous day, to support his views, 
 
 latter remained obstinately and ominously 
 silent, although it was well known that in a con- 
 versation with the Empress, an hour or so before 
 the meeting of the Cabinet, he had fully made her 
 aware of her husband's condition. 
 
 Enough. The flat went forth dooming the 
 unhappy and broken-down monarch henceforth 
 to wander aimlessly in the wake of his already 
 
 >uraged legions — a commander destitute of 
 command, a moral burden to his generals, a 
 sovereign deprived of a sovereign's will, a human 
 
 ture wracked with physical agony to whom 
 the hardest worked house-surgeon of the most 
 crowded hospital in the lowliest neighbourhood 
 would have spared a couch to rest his weary 
 body. 
 
 This fiat Napoleon III. attempted to upset 
 only once, viz., eight days later, on the 17th 
 
 List, when, towards midnight, Trochu re- 
 turned to Paris with a proclamation in his pocket 
 appointing him Governor of Paris, and beginning 
 with the words " I precede the Emperor only by 
 few hours." It is but fair to say that the pro- 
 posed return lacked the indispensable element of
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 41 1 
 
 dignity, and that the Empress was justified in her 
 opposition to an Emperor's slinking back to the 
 Tuileries in the dark like a pursued criminal. It 
 would have been well for her own share in the 
 history of the Second Empire had she remembered 
 the necessity for a display of dignity in her exit 
 from the Tuileries on the 4th September. The 
 daughter of Victor Emmanuel did remember it at 
 her departure from the Palais Royal. 
 
 It should also be said that the Emperor's pro- 
 posal was prompted by his generals. He himself 
 was too ill, too crushed to take the initiative in 
 anything ; fatalist though he was, he knew that 
 Fate had forsaken him, wearied by his repeated 
 indecision to take the cues given to him. If on 
 the 8th August he had boldly announced his 
 determination to M. Richard to return to Paris 
 be the consequences what they might, of two 
 things one would have assuredly happened, in 
 spite of his illness. If he could keep on his legs 
 at the headquarters of the army, he could have 
 kept on his legs in Paris ; but even in a contrary 
 ease, his mere presence in the capital would have 
 put an end to the Regency if he had so willed it. 
 And with the end of the Regency, the meeting of 
 the Chambers, which was originally fixed for the 
 11th, not the 9th, August, could have been 
 avoided, for throughout we must not lose sight <>l 
 the fact that the most illegal act of the Regency 
 was this summons of the Chambers. By the
 
 LM'l RCURREN is OF 
 
 terms of the Constitution the right to summon 
 
 the Chamber belonged exclusively to the Em- 
 
 [n reality, the Empress, notwithstanding 
 
 her private dislike of M. Ollivier, would have 
 
 r resorted to this step but for her irresistible 
 wish to overthrow him after she became aware 
 that on two points he would not give way to her, 
 namely, the return of the Emperor and that of 
 
 Prince Imperial. I am not speaking without 
 authority, tor it is well known that at the begin- 
 ning, that is, after the declaration of the war, the 
 Empress was as firmly opposed to the continued 
 sittings of the Chambers as were the Emperor 
 and M. ( Mlivier, and that she approved of the 
 latter's instigation of their somewhat abrupt pro- 
 rogation. If, on the other hand, the Emperor, 
 
 ng what had happened, had allowed the 
 Chambers to meet, rather than break the promise 
 contained in a communication to the Senate and 
 the Corps Legislatif to the effect that the Empress 
 would summon them in case of need — though only 
 on the authority of his signature — he would have 
 <>nce more prorogued them within four and twenty 
 hours of their meeting, namely, after their having 
 I the troops and money required. This 
 could and would have been done by a simple 
 in the Journal Ojjiciel ; which order 
 would have prevented all further debates and 
 
 ible recriminations in the Chamber. The 
 Corps Legislatif might have accepted the order
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 413 
 
 submissively or not, the whole of its Republican 
 members would have been arrested the next day, 
 and afterwards have found themselves on a war- 
 ship at Cherbourg closely guarded and without 
 the means of escape. This, by his own subse- 
 quent confession, was M. Ollivier's plan, and there 
 is not the least o ubt that the Emperor would 
 have sanctioned it — unless he had a better one 
 instead. 
 
 Would the plan have succeeded? In spite of 
 everything that has been said to the contrary, I 
 am inclined to think it would. I am not libelling 
 the memory of Thiers, Favre, Gambetta, Arago 
 and the rest of the Republican ringleaders in deny- 
 ing them an extraordinary amount of physical 
 courage, and I feel pretty certain that the generals 
 then in Paris would have followed the lead of the 
 Emperor, discredited though he was, rather than 
 that of un tas de pekins. They would have cer- 
 tainly not refused to act at the call of the Emperor, 
 but they would have refused to act at the sole 
 bidding of Ollivier to repress a revolution, if one 
 had broken out in consequence of the imprison- 
 ment of the deputies, just as they would have 
 refused to be instigated by Favre and Gambetta 
 into fomenting one. French military leaders 
 have an invincible objection to take their orders 
 from, or even operate in concert with, civilians, 
 an objection of which Prince Louis Napoleon was 
 thoroughly aware when he sent Fleur) i<> Algeria
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 nlist his military co-operators for the Coup 
 but Napoleon III., after eighteen years' 
 -,i. was no longer a civilian. 
 
 I .mi all the more confirmed in my opinion that 
 not one of the generals would have acted at 
 Ollivier's request, and that the Emperor's presence 
 was therefore necessary, by what I saw and heard 
 t>n tin- 4th September, and by what I have 
 gathered since. 
 
 During the twenty-six years that have gone by.. 
 there has practically not been a week which has 
 not added some important item to my large collec- 
 tion of notes on this subject. And all these, 
 without exception, prove to me, beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt, two things. 1st. That a single resolute 
 general not only could have prevented the invasion 
 of the Palais Bourbon by the mob, but have driven 
 them thence if they had effected an entrance, and 
 have secured the so-called founders of the Third 
 Republic almost without bloodshed. I say almost ; 
 compared with the blood that was shed by the 
 fancy strategy and tactics of Gambetta and his 
 coadjutors it would have been as the Serpentine 
 to the Atlantic. 2nd. That the resolute general's 
 success would not have been of the slightest use 
 unless the Emperor had been at hand to follow 
 it up by an immediate appearance in the streets 
 and among the people. His doing so might have 
 meant sudden death to him. I do not think it 
 would ; the fait accompli would have produced its
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 415 
 
 effect. I repeat, in the absence of the Emperor 
 the success would have been of no use, for the 
 general would have either had to eat it raw, like 
 "the cat ate the steak " in Heine's adage, or have 
 had to hand it to the Republicans to cook. 
 With this difference, that there was not a single 
 general whose mental and political digestion was 
 equal to the sudden swallowing of such a raw 
 dictatorship. Maria Theresa or Catherine II. 
 would have faced the storm, the former did on 
 one occasion with good results; Catherine I., nay, 
 Elizabeth of Russia, or Marie Antoinette might 
 have faced it ; the Duchesse d'Orleans (the grand- 
 mother of the present Duke) attempted the thing 
 in vain. But it would, at any rate, have been 
 worth trying. The Empress, who for many years 
 had endeavoured to personate several of these 
 women in turns, left at the first rumblings of the 
 storm, hence there was no one to enact the 
 sequel to its weathering, except MM. Favre and 
 Gambetta, whose policy, it need scarcely be said, 
 was to let the storm spend itself, taking care 
 meanwhile to secure the valuable cargo in the 
 shape of ministries and so forth. 
 
 Lest all this should read like so much unfounded 
 assertion on my part, I produce the note of a con- 
 versation with an eye-witness of, and actor in the 
 events of the day, whose sincerity is unimpeach- 
 able, 1 and who, I believe, subsequently amplified 
 1 M. Louis Charles Estancelin, one of the most faithful follower!
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 his statement in print ; but of this I am not 
 certain. 
 
 rwice, according to my informant, did the 
 troops emerge from the Rue de Burgoyne, twice 
 did they draw up in line of battle at the foot of 
 the Pont de la Concorde, twice were their rifles 
 levelled at the rabble on the bridge, twice were 
 their rifles lowered because the order to "fire" 
 did not come. In each case they returned 
 silently whence they had come. Who had 
 countermanded the defence of the Palais Bour- 
 My informant was unable to tell me. 
 He only knew that " a resolute man with a few 
 hundred troops at his back could have made a 
 clean sweep of the rabble even after it had 
 invaded the House itself, and, moreover, have 
 arrested Favre, Gambetta and Co. there and 
 then without the least trouble " ; for he tried and 
 succeeded partially, but Favre and the rest were 
 gone. Morny would have done it in time had 
 he been in the presidential seat, but his successor 
 M. Schneider was not Morny. M. Schneider 
 with or against his will also had a share in the 
 throw of the Empire by his timidity to enact 
 
 of the fortunes of the d'Orleans family, and a member of the Corps 
 
 latif on the 4th September. The conversation alluded to 
 
 .lace on the day of the late Comte de Paris' silver wedding. 
 
 It was begun at Kingston station, after the religious ceremony at 
 
 the Kingston-on-Thames Catholic Chapel, and continued in the 
 
 afternoon during the reception at Sheen House. The note was 
 
 handy, in consequence of its having appeared in The Fortnightly 
 
 ii one of my articles ; so I took it away with me.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 417 
 
 his part, even before the 4th September, at which 
 period he worried the Empress with his appre- 
 hensions of what the opposition might do if 
 Ollivier continued in power against their will. 
 
 That the Chamber would be invaded in a few 
 minutes, my informant did not doubt for a single 
 instant, and invaded it was almost immediately 
 after he had returned to his seat. Thereupon he 
 went down to the court-yard at the back of the 
 Palais Bourbon and borrowed a hundred and 
 fifty men of the National Guard of their com- 
 mander. Preceded by four drummers — whose 
 instruments were unfortunately not sufficiently 
 tightened to sound the charge at once, and whose 
 delay in doing this made him miss the ringleaders, 
 he gained an entrance into the House by the 
 mere discharge of his pistol and the co-operation 
 of the quickest of the four drummers. In five 
 minutes the place was clear. But just as he 
 entered by one door, he saw Favre disappear by 
 the opposite one. 
 
 The inside of the building being safe, my 
 informant began to think about preserving it 
 from an attack on the outside. Hailing an empty 
 cab, he drove unmolested to the headquarters 
 of General Trochu at the Louvre, where he met 
 the general just coming out of his private apart 
 ments on his way to the drawing-room where the 
 officers on duty spent their intervals of leisure 
 Trochu was not even in uniform. M. Estancelin 
 
 1 1
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 >sed the situation in a few words. " Too late, 
 my dear sir," replied Trochu quietly. " I myself 
 wanted to go to the Chamber, but the crowd was 
 
 lense on two of the bridges, that I was 
 compelled to turn back. Besides," he added, 
 when his interlocutor pointed out to him that he 
 had come in a cab, " besides, on my way back, 
 I met a good many of your colleagues, who told 
 
 that it was all over. Too late, my dear sir, 
 too late ! " 
 
 " Practically," remarked M. Estancelin, 
 •• Trochu was right. When I passed alongside 
 the gardens of the Tuileries once more, I learnt 
 that the Empress was gone, and on my return to 
 the Chamber I naturally went straight into the 
 House itself, thinking that the deputies, after the 
 departure of Favre and Gambetta, followed by 
 the mob, would have resumed their sitting. With 
 the exception of a few minor officials, there was 
 not a soul there. I was told that the deputies 
 were assembled in the picture gallery of the 
 
 ident's private residence. They might as 
 well have gone home for the good they did. 
 Although they were not aware as yet of the 
 Empress' flight, they had already decided to 
 send a deputation to the H6tel-de-Ville to put 
 themselves in communication with the provisional 
 Government ; which decision was tantamount to 
 an acknowldgement of and adhesion to this 
 G overnment. The latter wanted neither acknow-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 419 
 
 ledgment nor adhesion. Supported by the mob, 
 they had taken possession of the reins of power, 
 and if that quasi-acknowledgment and adhesion 
 had been withheld they could and would have 
 said, 'Then, come and dislodge us.' It was too 
 late to do that ; ' Too late, my dear sir,' as 
 Trochu said to me. In order to prove to you 
 that the mob-elected, or rather the self-elected 
 and mob-confirmed Government of the National 
 Defence wanted none of the deputies' acknow- 
 ledgment or adhesion, I may tell you this. A 
 little while after my return to the Chamber, 
 Thiers came back also, and notwithstanding 
 Buffet's efforts to the contrary, prevailed upon 
 the deputies to retire altogether, and to leave the 
 Government of the Republic — one should mark 
 the distinction — the charge and responsibility of 
 the new situation events had created. Trans- 
 lated into pertinent language, the advice came to 
 this : ' Your active help we do not require for the 
 moment, inasmuch as it would interfere with our 
 personal ambition and the fat posts we have 
 secured for ourselves ; and we do not even think 
 you sufficiently powerful to lock you up in the 
 event of your opposition, as Louis Napoleon did 
 on the 2nd December '51.' ' 
 
 MM. Victorien Sardou, Armand Gouzien, who 
 died lately, and Ferdinand de Lesseps absolutely 
 saved the Tuileries from being pillaged l>\ .1 
 signal and spontaneous display of tact, and with 
 
 E E 2
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 even less recourse to armed force than M. 
 incelin. 
 Am I not justified, then, in surmising that the 
 Emperor, had he been in Paris, would have 
 averted the fall of his dynasty by a similar dis- 
 play or by a repetition of the 2nd December, 185 1, 
 and that those who prevented his return thither, 
 are responsible for this fall? Am I not justified 
 in thinking that, ill though he was, both his blood 
 and his pride would have rebelled at the thought 
 that those whom he had swept from his path 
 eighteen years ago like so much refuse, should 
 beard him in what was still nominally his own 
 house ; that he would have risen to the occasion in 
 spite of his cruel sufferings, and that the Franco- 
 German War would have probably terminated at 
 Sedan ? For it is not the least reproach to the 
 Empress and her party that they did not send 
 negotiators to King Wilhelm's headquarters the 
 moment the news of the Emperor's surrender 
 reached them, which was on Friday, the 2nd 
 
 S< ptember, between 6 and 9 p.m. 
 
 # # * # # 
 
 Placing myself for a moment in the reader's 
 position, I perceive one flaw in my argument 
 which, if not removed, would probably damage 
 the whole. The man who had not sufficient firm- 
 ness of mind and purpose to override his wife's 
 decision on the 7th August, and who on the 17th 
 August allowed her once more to dictate to him,
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 421 
 
 would have proved equally irresolute on the 3rd- 
 4th September face to face with an insurrectionary 
 movement on the part of his enemies, the Repub- 
 licans. This, I expect, will be the conclusion of 
 three-fourths, perhaps of nine-tenths, of those who 
 have followed me to the end. 
 
 I will deal in their natural order with the two 
 first-named dates, which, in my opinion, settled the 
 fate of the Second Empire more irrevocably than 
 the two battles that preceded them or the one 
 that came afterwards. 
 
 There is not the least doubt that on the day 
 after Woerth, Napoleon III. showed himself 
 miserably weak in submitting to the Empress' 
 veto. If there were no previous evidence what- 
 ever that the son of Hortense belonged to the 
 category of husbands graphically characterised as 
 " henpecked," this one instance of tame submission 
 would be conclusive. But we have yet to learn 
 that the henpecked husband is necessarily a 
 physical coward in the hour of danger ; remem- 
 bering as we do the story of the Herculean lion- 
 tamer who repaired to the cage of the forest-king 
 to sleep off his night's potations rather than join 
 the nuptial couch, partly occupied by a very small 
 but shrewish wife, who, nevertheless, when she 
 found him next morning branded him as a pol- 
 troon. We also remember a Thane ol Cawdor 
 who was as wax in the hands of a scheming 
 spouse and who obtained his kingdom by means
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 violent than those of Napoleon III., but 
 who in spite of all this held it bravely to the last, 
 who not only had the lawlessness but the: daring 
 of the usurper. We should at all times be reluc- 
 tant to believe Shakespeare at fault in his psycho- 
 logy, even if Macbeth were only the creature of 
 his imagination. We know that he was not; 
 Hollinshed's Chronicles are there to prove his 
 existence ; Wyntown's Crony kill of Scotland 
 proves the battles between Macbeth and Macduff. 
 But we need not go to fiction, based upon imper- 
 fectly-recorded history, for our examples. Assu- 
 redly, none would deny the courage of Henri IV., 
 Peter the Great or Victor Emmanuel. I am 
 ting the first three out of a score that recur 
 to me at once. Well, the Bearnais who wore a 
 plume of white feathers so that he might be more 
 easily distinguished in the fray, who in the thick 
 oi it shouted to his captains " Ecartez-vous, 
 messieurs, je veux paraitre," showed the white 
 leather on more than one occasion in his domestic 
 wrangles with Marie de Medici when she aspired 
 to have a voice in the foreign policy of the 
 country. 
 
 The founder of the Russian Empire as we know 
 it. a strong man physically, morally, though not 
 moral in the conventional sense, and mentally, if 
 ever there was one, whose daring and endurance 
 have become proverbial, the conquerer of Charles 
 XII. at Pultawa, and the giant who bearded the
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 423 
 
 Strelitz and broke their power, allowed the creature 
 — a kitchen-wench or tavern-strumpet — I leave the 
 choice to the reader — whom he had raised from 
 the gutter to the throne to turn and rend him. 
 By the uplifting of a finger he might have flung 
 her back into the social sewer whence she sprang, 
 or he might have quasi-legally made an end of her 
 just as he did of his son and heir — far less guilty 
 than she — yet he refrained. Those who would 
 still doubt Napoleon's resolution had he been in 
 Paris face to face with the Republicans, and base 
 their doubt on the want of firmness displayed in 
 his dealings with his wife, had better ponder 
 the following. The Empress, in spite of all her 
 faults, must not for one moment be compared 
 with the second consort of the Great Peter ; but 
 this makes the argument all the stronger, for on 
 the other hand the Strelitz were assuredly more 
 formidable foes than either Thiers, Favre, Gam- 
 betta and the mob that made the latter two 
 dictators under the occult influence of the first- 
 named of the three. Nevertheless, the erstwhile 
 kitchen-wench, illiterate, uncouth and ugly, in 
 spite of the assertions to the contrary of Court 
 historians, poets and novelists, got the whip hand 
 of the man who in ages to come will stand forth 
 as the " Culturheros " of Russia; the; pigmy— for 
 Catherine was short and stump)- — defied the giant. 
 She not only did not wince at his threats, but 
 argued their futility. One day Peter led her into
 
 UNDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 m with a magnificent Venetian mirror in it. 
 "Look," he said, significantly; "this thing is 
 made of vile stuff; it has passed through the fire 
 which has ennobled it as it were, so that it has vir- 
 tually become an ornament to a palace; but one 
 blow from my hand can reduce it to its original 
 insignificance." And, suiting the action to the 
 word, he shattered the mirror into a hundred 
 fragments. She, however, did not budge, not a 
 muscle of her face moved ; she simply said, 
 Was such destruction worthy of you, and do you 
 think your palace has become more beautiful in 
 consequence ? " And he at whose frown an em- 
 trembled kept silent. 
 After this any picture of the "henpecked hero," 
 with or without a crown, would be stale, flat and 
 unprofitable. If he is crownless the hen pecks at 
 his head, in the other case she pecks at his crown. 
 And as there are few heroes, whether crowned or 
 uncrowned, who have the courage to interrupt 
 curtain lectures by that clever sentence of the 
 
 nt, Philippe d ; Orleans — " I do not discuss 
 business on a pillow " — the crowned one in virtue 
 of the great hospitality offered him elsewhere 
 indulges in frequent absences from the nuptial 
 chamber, although he nearly always fares worse 
 
 ling farther. O r else he resists the perfidious 
 
 calls of his mate in the manner of Bonaparte 
 who, when Josephine happened to knock at his 
 door while he was at work, answered without
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 425 
 
 opening, "II faut ajourner l'amour apres la vic- 
 toire." 
 
 Of course, the temperament of the hero himself 
 will to a great extent influence his view of, and 
 action in, such conjugal amenities. Victor 
 Emmanuel, with his first wife's sympathies prac- 
 tically with the power against which his every 
 effort is directed, remains cheerful through- 
 out ; with her successor, of whom he is consider- 
 ably more afraid, his conduct becomes now and 
 again absolutely farcical, but, farcical or not, the 
 hero of Novara — a hero in spite of defeat — sub- 
 mits to be henpecked and dictated to by the 
 daughter of the erstwhile trooper in the Body- 
 guard, just as the hero of Pultawa refrained in the 
 end from all opposition to the plotting of the 
 kitchen-wench. That Rosina Vercellana's opinions 
 or want of opinions did not materially affect the 
 course of events which culminated in a free 
 and united Italy was simply Victor Emmanuel's 
 good fortune ; that Empress Eugenie's so-called 
 opinions, to use the mildest term, contributed 
 to the downfall of her husband's throne was his 
 misfortune, but we feel practically certain that 
 had Napoleon 1 1 1. 's case been Victor Emmanuel's, 
 the results would have been equally disastrous. 
 They who would contend that all this is so much 
 irresponsible and fanciful deduction on my part, 
 who would maintain that to judge by pre 
 cedents is a dangerous thing, have assuredly
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 ifer basis for their arguments than I have. 
 of the most important facts of modern 
 
 \ was the direct outcome of the action 
 of a bigoted and shrewish woman on a man 
 with a had digestion who suffered in conse- 
 quence. I am alluding to the Revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantes. Louis XIV. was only 
 forty-seven when he signed that memorable 
 document ; he had been married to Mme. de 
 Maintenon only for a twelvemonth and his state 
 of health, though not good, was flourishing com- 
 
 I with that of Napoleon III. who was 
 fifteen years older and who had been married 
 nearly seventeen years to a woman who at any 
 time during that period could and did twist 
 him round her finger. One more remark be- 
 fore I close this apparently useless, but never- 
 theless necessary, digression. One day while 
 Italy was preparing to cast off Austria's yoke, 
 Victor Emmanuel was presiding at an important 
 Ministerial Council at Turin, which is only about 
 four miles distant from la Mandria which he 
 had built for Rosina Vercellana. Rosina, who 
 was of an exceedingly jealous disposition, did 
 not like him to be away for any length of time 
 and she sent a mounted messenger asking the 
 King to return immediately. Of course he 
 could not leave at a moment's notice, and he 
 sent an answer to this effect. In a little over 
 an hour, the messenger returned with a second
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 427 
 
 note which this time he showed to his Ministers, 
 saying ; " Rosina wants to see me. I must go, 
 for she threatens to throw herself out of the 
 window if I don't come. I know her and she 
 would be as good as her word." 
 
 Thus far the wholesale submission of Napoleon 
 III. to his wife up to the fall of the Ollivier 
 Cabinet. I do not profess to know all the 
 "undercurrents" of this particular period, but 
 I know a great many and on no other theory 
 than that of his abject moral fear of the Empress 
 is Napoleon's submission and his acquiescence 
 in Ollivier's removal explicable to me. We 
 must, moreover, not lose sight for one moment 
 of his state of health. Under such conditions 
 a man may revolt for a single instant against 
 his wife's tyranny, but not for longer than that. 1 
 This, Napoleon attempted to do on the morning 
 of the 7th August and failed. His further sub- 
 mission is more intelligible, even if Rouher had 
 
 1 A delightful instance of such a short-lasted revolt recurs to 
 my memory as I write. The story may compensate for the some- 
 what serious manner of the whole of this conclusion, which manner 
 I was advised to adopt much against my inclination. Truly, the 
 story only relates to a publican, but a henpecked potentate 
 differs very little from a henpecked publican. About the middle 
 of the eighteenth century there was a well-known publii house in 
 Russell Street, Covent Garden, the "Ben Jonson's Head," kepi by 
 Joe Weatherby. Weatherby was dangerously ill and was 
 attended by Dr. Barrowby, one of the foremost physi< ians of tho e 
 clays. A fierce election contest was raging at Westminster between 
 Lord Trentham (afterwards Lord Gower, I believe; and Sir I leorge 
 Vandeput. Barrowby was one of the hitter's partisan . Mrs.
 
 I NDERCURRENTS OF 
 
 not explained it afterwards. I am using his 
 own words as nearly as 1 can remember them, 
 but 1 am practically certain that my memory 
 is not at tank. The- fact of Rouher's enmity 
 Ollivier and his (Rouher's) almost uncon- 
 ditional adhesion to the programme, tactics, 
 sparring for wind — call it what we will — of the 
 Empress and her party need not invalidate this 
 particular statement. To a certain extent 
 this enmity on the one side and blind obstinacy 
 on the other are calculated to add weight to 
 this explanation inasmuch as it came after the 
 fall of the Empire when he, like a good many 
 others, was probably sorry for what he had 
 done. 
 
 According to Rouher, then, the Emperor, after 
 the first fruitless attempt to return to Paris — i.e. 
 that of the early part of the 7th August — only 
 made the subsequent ones in a half-hearted way, 
 in other words, for form's sake, ' ; pour acquit de 
 conscience," as the French themselves would say. 
 
 Weatherby one of the former's and both the medicus and the wife 
 had tried to convert the patient ; platonically as it were, for neither 
 had the hope to see him leave his bed to go to the poll. In fact, 
 Mrs. Weatherby deeply bewailed her husband's condition because 
 it prevented his voting for Lord Trentham. On the occasion of 
 one of Barrowby's visits he found the sick man up and almost 
 dressed. " I am going to the poll, doctor,'' said Weatherby in 
 '• My wife is away for the morning and I thought T 
 could get as far as Covent Garden Church (St. Paul's?) to vote 
 for S:- This was unexpected news for Barrowby and 
 
 he let Weatherby go. Two hours afterwards he died, scolded by 
 his wife and her friends, adherents to the Court party.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 429 
 
 The Emperor fully expected the opposition that 
 was offered, but he was also aware that it wanted 
 but a word from him, uttered decisively, to over- 
 ride this opposition. The powers conferred 
 upon the Empress by him were subject to one 
 condition, namely, that of his taking command of 
 the army, and remained valid only during- the 
 time he exercised this command. Nominally this 
 command ceased on the 12th August 1 when it 
 was transferred to Bazaine. Hence from that 
 moment the Regency had no raison d'etre, it was 
 no longer a legal power, and one word from the 
 Emperor would have sufficed to put an end to it. 
 Why did not he utter it ? Because, still ac- 
 cording to Rouher, the Emperor was thoroughly 
 cognisant of the critical situation when no 
 government, whatever its nature, must be meddled 
 with, however slightly, on the penalty of perish- 
 ing altogether. And he knew that his return to 
 Paris would shake this Government of the 
 Empress to its foundations ; he was, moreover, 
 by no means certain that some of the Ministers, 
 acting in concert with the Empress, would con- 
 sent to act with him who was already designated 
 as the living image of defeat. 
 
 1 In reality it ceased four days before, viz., on the 8th August al 
 the receipt of a letter written by the Empress on the 7th, and a 
 rough copy of which w.is found at the Tuileries. I remembei one 
 sentence of it well. "Come to an understanding with Marshal 
 Bazaine about all future operations." Tins was tantamounl to 
 depriving the Emperor of his command. Somewhat peremp 
 is it not ? I fancy my theory of the " henpecked husband 
 not require much stronger proof.
 
 I NDERCURREN is OF 
 
 And thus, weary in mind and body, he resigned 
 himself to drift, praying that death would come, 
 ua\. absolutely courting it in several instances. 
 Like those of Peter the Great, with whom I 
 would not altogether compare him, Napoleon's 
 ;ical sufferings, though excruciating indeed, 
 were as nothing to his mental agony. Like 
 r's, Napoleon's thoughts must have become 
 bitter as gall. There is no Shakespeare to 
 portray for us the appalling pessimism of Peter's 
 mind while he was literally "dying by inches"; 
 nevertheless, there was a great German poet who, 
 among many gifts, had the Shakespearean sense 
 of proportion wherewith to gauge the Russian 
 Titan's disgust of the world and his revolt at the 
 linorerine torture. Karl Immermann makes him 
 : — 
 
 N'icht sterben konnen ! Endige ! Schon klingt Gerausch 
 Arbeitenden Verwesens. Bei dem Werke sind 
 < .eschaftig-laut die Wurmen Meine Zunge qualt 
 Ein salzig-faulischer Geschmack, als lage d'rauf 
 Der Welt Gemeinheit. 
 
 Id that I could but die, force the end ; 
 ready hearing, as I do, corruption hard at work 
 And worms busy at their labours. 
 
 tit and sickening taste torments my tongue, 
 tough the world's baseness were lying there.) 
 
 It requires no great effort of the imagination 
 
 to credit the war-tossed Emperor, wracked with 
 
 virtually disowned by almost every one, 
 
 with similar thoughts. The " heavenly liberator " 
 
 whom he invoked, refused, however, to come at
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE 43 r 
 
 his bidding, and released him only three years 
 and five months afterwards. Both Fate and 
 Death were less merciful to Napoleon III. than 
 to Peter the Great. The latter did not have to 
 drain the bitter cup of humiliation to the dregs, 
 and, to judge from the death-bed scene as re- 
 produced by those around him, Peter did no 
 meet his partial disappointments with the fortitude 
 and dignity displayed by Napoleon amidst the 
 whole collapse of his fortunes. The Emperor's 
 bitterest enemies cannot deny this dignity. The 
 reflections of the half-tutored Russian savage and 
 those of the over-civilised semi- Italian, semi- 
 Frenchman — for he was only a Frenchman on 
 the mother's side — may have been identical, as 
 far as the world's ingratitude and baseness were 
 concerned ; their manifestation was widely different 
 Peter raved and stormed when the end was near, 
 and brought unspeakable, though absolutely just, 
 accusations against her whom he had raised to the 
 throne. Napoleon III. did not utter a word of 
 reproach against any one in the early morn of 
 the 2nd September while preparing for his final 
 exit from the stage on which he had reigned 
 supreme for nearly eighteen years, on which he 
 had enacted almost as marvellous a corned) as 
 that enacted by his uncle, though with far smaller 
 intellectual means, far weaker support and, above 
 all, less loyalty from his caste than the former. 
 No bitter word fell from his lips, and lest the fea- 
 tures should tell their own tale he put on rouge,
 
 I \1>| R.CURREN is OF THE SECOND EMPIRE 
 
 and put ii on more artistically than he did on the 
 morning ol his escape from Ham, for he had 
 learnt the trick meanwhile from Boufle, the 
 actor. 
 
 Win should he not have put on rouge ? Any 
 illusion he might have fostered during these 
 eighteen years to the effect that his was not a 
 comedy like the four preceding ones, in which his 
 uncle, Louis XV 1 1 1., Charles X. and Louis Philippe 
 had respectively played the principal parts, or that, 
 if a comedy, it would hold a permanent place in the 
 dynastic repertory of France, must have been dis- 
 pelled by then. Had there been a doubt left, it 
 would have vanished three or four hours later 
 when, on leaving the weaver's cottage at Donchery, 
 ,i\e Madame Fournaise five gold pieces. I 
 believe they may be seen there to this day. 
 Each of the five coins bore a different portrait. 
 There was one of Napoleon I., one of Louis 
 XVIII., one of Charles X., one of Louis Philippe 
 and one of himself. A check-taker at an ordinary 
 theatre seeing so many differently labelled passes 
 would argue from it that the patrons of the estab- 
 lishment at which he officiated were fickle, too 
 fond of novelty and, above all, too prone to worry 
 the management. " A bou entendeur, salut." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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