THE EMSRESS EUGENIE LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PRESENTED BY Mrs. MacKinley Helm \ I THE EMPRESS EUGENIE. After Winterhalter. Collection : Augustin Risahgitz. THE LIFE OF THE EMPRESS EUGENIE BY JANE T. STODDART k , AUTHOR OF "THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.G." WITH SIX ILLUSTRATIONS IN PHOTOGRAVURE THIRD EDITION E. P. DUTTON & CO. 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET NEW YORK PKINTKD IN ENGLAND BV WILLIAM ERENDON AND SON. LTD. fLYMOLTH PREFACE FOR the general outline of events under the Second Empire, I have found the seven volumes of M. Pierre de la Gorce especially helpful. References to his Histoire du Second Empire are acknowledged in the text. Among recently published memoirs the most useful have been the Bernstorff papers, and Count von Hubner's Neuf Ans de Souvenirs d'un Am- bassadeur d'Autriche a Paris." Count von Hiibner mentions several incidents which are missed by all other writers on the Empress's marriage. He was the first public man to hear of the engagement. Writing on 7 January, 1853, he says: " Ce soir, chez la princesse de Lieven, on me chuchote a l'oreille que Mademoiselle de Monti jo pourrait bien devenir imperatrice." The famous ball at the Tuileries on 12 January, 1853, has been described by numerous pens, but the Austrian diplomatist alone records the chief event of the evening. Mademoiselle de Montijo entered the ballroom on the arm of her old friend James Rothschild, whose son followed with the elder Countess. As the ladies were about to take their seats on the bench appropriated to the wives of Preface ministers, Madame Drouyn de Lhuys stepped for- ward, and told them that these places were reserved. Napoleon, who had seen the rebuff, hurried to the Spanish ladies, and led them to chairs next the members of his own family. " The spectators," says Count von Hiibner, " understood the full meaning of the incident." " On peut dire qu'a ce bal a eu lieu la declaration de mariage." From the list of authorities which follows I have omitted [many works which have been indirectly helpful. Had these been added, the list might easily have been made twice as long. I have omitted also all reference to the ephemeral sources in which so much important material must be sought, as these cannot easily be classi- fied. French newspapers continue to publish, from time to time, articles which no student of the Second Empire can afford to neglect. With- in recent weeks, for example, the Gaulois has printed an article on " The Friends of the Prince Imperial" and another on the schemes of French statesmen in 1870 to secure an alliance with Austria or Italy. I gladly acknowledge the help received from many books and pamphlets which describe the Empress's summer progresses with her husband. The best of these is the illustrated volume of A. Marc, on the journey of i860. Other writers who deserve men- tion are C. L. Cormont, for the journey to Auvergne, F. Ribeyre, for the Empress's voyage to the East, and H. Villa, for the Orleans visit of 1868. IV Preface I have not thought it necessary to call attention in detail to the defamatory pamphlets in French, German, and Italian, most of which date from the period of the Franco- Prussian War. The writers, with all their malice, have not succeeded in fasten- ing any personal charge upon Napoleon's consort, and most of them display a surprising ignorance of the facts of her career. For valuable suggestions made while the book was passing through the press, I am indebted to Count Serge Fleury, grandson of General Fleury, the distinguished cavalry leader, whose name occurs so frequently in these pages. The genealogies which precede the Index have been kindly supplied by Mr. J. M. Bulloch. J. T. S. LIST OF AUTHORITIES About, E Adam, Madame m Ashley, Hon. A. Nouvclles et Souvenirs. Mes Souvenirs et nos Idees avant 1870. Afes Illusions et nos Soujfrances pendant le Siege de Paris. Life of Lord Palmerston. Barail, F. C. du . Barrot, Odilon Bavoux, E. Bernstorff, A. von Beslay, C. Beslay, F. Besson, Bishop >> >j Beust, Count von Bingham, Hon. D. H. Bismarck, Prince . Bouchot, H. . Bouclon, A. de Bridier, L. Broglie, le Due DE Brun, Pierre Bulloch, J. M. Busch, Moritz Mes Souvenirs. Memoires Posthumes. Une Sceur de Charite. Im Kampfe filr Preussens Ehre. Mes Souvenirs. Lacordaire : sa Vie, ses CEuvres.^ La Vie du Cardinal de Bonnechose. La Vie du Cardinal Mathieu. Memoirs. The Marriages of the Bonapartes. Memoirs, Letters to his Wife, etc. Les Elegances du Second Empire. La Vie du R. P. Ravignan. Une Famille francaise ; les De Lesseps. Souvenirs. Henri Beyle (Stendhal). The Family of Kirkpatrick. Tagebuchb latter. Camp, Maxime du . Literary Recollections. Canrobert, le Marechal Souvenirs. Carette, Madame . . My Mistress, the Empress Euginie. Cassagnac, Granier de . Souvenirs. vii List of Authorities Cassk, Baron du . . Souvenirs d'un Aide-de-Camp du Roi Jerome. Castellane, le Marechal de Journal (1804-62). Castille, H. . . . Portraits Politiques. Chambrier, James de . La Cour et la Societe du Second Empire. Chapelle, Alfred de la Posthumous Works of Napoleon III. Claretie, Jules . . Histoire de la Rivolution de 1870-71. Octave Feuillet. 1 . Stendhal et ses Amis. cordier, h. . Darimon, Alfred » » >» ji Deleage, P. . DOUDAN, X. . Ducrot, A. A. Dufour, Theophile Dupanloup, Bishop »> » . A Travers une Rivolution. . Notes pour servir h r histoire de la guerre de 1870. . L' Histoire d'un Jour. Trois Mois chez les Zoulous. - Milanges et Lettres. . La Vie militaire du Giniral Ducrot. . Lettres a Quinet pendant I 'Empire. . Lettres Choisies. . Journal In time. Evans, Dr. T. W. Memoirs. Fagan, L. Falloux, le Comte de II Favre, Jules 11 Life of Panizzi. Mimoires dun Royaliste. Life of Madame Swetchine. Jules Favre et le Comte de Bismarck. Conferences et Milanges. Ferronnays, Marquise de la Mimoires. Filon, Augustin . . Merimie et ses Amis. Fitzmaurice, Lord E. . Life of Earl Granville. Flaubert, G. . . Correspondance. Fleury, Le General Comte Souvenirs. Forster, John . . Walter Savage Landor. Foulon, le Cardinal . Histoire de la Vie de Mgr. Darboy. Gavard, Charles Un Diplomate a Londres. Vlll List of Authorities Gramont, le Due DE Greville, Charles La France el la Prusse avant la Guerre. The Greville Memoirs. Herisson, le Comte d' Hanotaux, G. . . Histoire de la France Contemporaine. Haussmann, G. E. . Memoires du Baron Haussmann. Haussonville, le Comte d' Mon Journal pendant la Guerre (puolie par son Fils). Lacordaire. Souvenirs d'un Officier d' Ordonnance. Nouveau Journal. Souvenirs Intimes. Le Prince Lmpirial. Les Confessions. Souvenirs de Jeunesse. Neuf Ans de Souvenirs. »> >> Houssaye, Arsene » Hubner, Count von Irving, Washington Life and Letters of Washington Lrving. Janze, Alix de . . Berryer ; Souvenirs Intimes. Jerrold, VV. Blanchard Life of Napoleon III. KlRKPATRICK Lacordaire »> Lano, Pierre de . Lavalette, le Marquis de Lengle, Paul Lennox, Lord VV. P. Lesseps, F. de Loli£e, F. Loudon, Eugene . McDowall, VV. Magen, H. Chronicles of the Kirkpatrick Family. Correspondance du R. P. Lacordaire avec Madame Swetchine. Lettres inidites. Le Secret d'un Empire. Les Etablissements de Bienfaisance sous le Patronage de I'Imperatrice. Le Neveu des Bonaparte. Celebrities I Have Known. Souvenirs de Quarante Ans. Les Femmes du Second Empire. Le Journal de Fidus. History of the Burgh of Dumfries. Histoire du Second Empire. ix List of Authorities Martin, Sir Theodore Martinet A. Maugny, le Comte de . Maupas, C. E. de . Mazade, Charles de Merimee, Prosper . »j >> Michel, F. Michel, G. Ollivier, E. Life of the Prince Consort. Le Prince Impirial. Souvenirs du Second Empire. Me'moires sur le Second Empire. Monsieur Thiers. Letters to Panizzi. Lettres a une Lnconnue. Lettres inedites. Les Ecossais en France. Leon Say ; sa Vie. V Empire Liberal. Paterson, Nathaniel, D.D. Memoirs and Letters to his Family. Perreyve, Henri . Persigny, Fialin de Pinard, Ernest Poschinger, H. von Randon, le Marechal Rebell, H. Renan, E. Ricard, L. Xavier de Richard, Jules Rochefort, Henri Roumania, Charles of . Lettres de PAbb6 Perreyve. . Me'moires. . Journal. . Furst Bismarck und die Diplomaten 1852-90. Bismarck Portefeuille. Memoires. Les Lnspiratrices de Balzac, Stendhal, Merimee. Correspondance avec M. Berthelot. Feuilles ditachees. Autour des Bonaparte. Le Bonapartisme sous la Republique. Les Aventures de ma Vie. Aus dem Leben Konig Karls von Rumdnien. Saint-Amand, Imbert de Louis Napoleon and Mademoiselle de Montijo. ,, „ La Cour du Second Empire. ,, „ La France et VLtalie, 1859. ,, ,, Le Regne de Napoleon ILL. List of Authorities Saint- Am and, Imbert de Saint-Hilaire, J. B. de Saint-Valry, Gaston de Sand, George Segur, Anatole de Simon, Jules . >> >) Simpson, Robert . Sorel, Albert Stendhal LAbbe Deguerry, Cure de la Madeleine Victor Cousin : sa Vie. Souvenirs. Impressions et Souvenirs. Correspondance. Malgretout. Souvenirs et Recits d'un Frcre. Souvenirs du Quatre Septembre. Le Soir de ma Journie. Traditions of the Covenanters. Histoire diplomatique de la guerre Franco- A llemande. Lettres Intimes. Taine, H. Tascher de la Pagerie, Countess Thiers, Louis Adolphe . Ticknor, George . Tourneux, Maurice Trochu, Le General . Tschudi, Clara Tuileries H. Taine : sa Vie et sa Correspondance. Mon Si jour aux Tuileries. Notes et Souvenirs. Life, Letters, and Journals oj George Ticknor. Prosper Mirimee. CEuvres Posthumes. The Empress Eugenie. Papiers Secrets des Tuileries. Vallery Radot, R. Vandam, A. D. Veuillot, E. . Veuillot, Louis Life of Pasteur. An Englishman in Paris. Louis Veuillot. Correspondance. .] ft! hinges. CONTENTS CHAPTER I SCOTTISH AND SPANISH ANCESTRY OF THE EMPRESS PAGE The Dumfries-shire Kirkpatricks — The Kirkpatricks and Old Mortality — William Kirkpatrick of Malaga — Spanish ancestry of the Empress — Her father and mother — The Countess of Montijo — Prosper Merim6e — Granada — The birth of Eugenie I CHAPTER II Eugenie's girlhood Her childhood in Spain — Early years in Paris — Stendhal and Merimee — Death of Eugenie's father — Louis Napoleon — His projects of marriage — The hunting parties at Compiegne — Eugenie at Court — First rumours of the engagement 18 CHAPTER III THE IMPERIAL MARRIAGE The Imperial engagement made public — English comments — The Emperor's speech — Popularity of the marriage — The civil wed- ding — The ceremony at Notre Dame 43 CHAPTER IV THE YOUNG WIFE Eugenie's bridal triumph — The Crimean War — Queen Victoria and the Empress in 1855 — The Empress at Windsor — Queen Victoria's return visit to Paris — The cradle at the Tuileries — The christen- ing at Notre Dame — The Golden Rom- . . . . .66 xiii Contents CHAPTER V THE EMPRESS AND HER COURT PAGE The homes of the Empress — Spiritualism at the Tuileries — The great balls — Masked dances — The "Mondays of the Empress" — Orsini's crime .......... 90 CHAPTER VI THE EMPRESS AND HER COURT — continued The Cherbourg fetes — Crinolines at Cherbourg — The tour in Brittany — The Empress and Louis Veuillot — The Italian war — Eugenie's first Regency — Foreign women at Court — Countess Castiglione — Princess de Metternich — Pepa — Childhood of the Prince Imperial 1 1 2 CHAPTER VII THE EMPRESS AND THE PEOPLE Eugenie as traveller — Among the Alps — Algeria — Death of the Duchess of Alba — The Empress and Bishop Dupanloup — Visit to Scotland — Eugenie in Edinburgh and Glasgow — In the hospital at Clermont — The Empress as Churchwoman — Home troubles — The Empress and Prince Napoleon — With the cholera patients at Amiens 14 1 CHAPTER VIII THE EMPRESS IN THE DECLINING REIGN (1867-1869) Paris in the Exhibition year — The last season at Compiegne — Inter- vention in politics — Home life of Eugenie — Her leadership of fashion — Visit to Egypt in 1869 164 CHAPTER IX THE EMPRESS AND HER CHARITIES . . .189 CHAPTER X THE EMPRESS AND THE WAR OF 187O The deceptive calm — "Malgretout" — Causes of the war — Was Eugenie to blame ? — Her last Regency — Paris during the war — The news of Worth — Shall the Emperor return ? — The last night at the Tuileries . . . . . . . . . .194 xiv Contents CHAPTER XI THE DISCROWNED EMPRESS PAGE Loneliness of Eugenie in the crisis — The morning of September Fourth — The Empress and General Trochu — The threatening crowds — Revolution — Flight of the Empress — Strangers in the empty palace — Dr. Evans to the rescue — Sir John Burgoyne's yacht — The exile's psalm .219 CHAPTER XII THE FIRST YEARS IN ENGLAND Bismarck and the Empress — Regnier, the spy of Metz — Negotiations through General Boyer — Action of the Empress — Death of Prosper Merim6e — Return of Napoleon from Wilhelmshohe — At Buckingham Palace — Last days of the Emperor — His will — Property of the Imperial family . . . . . .239 CHAPTER XIII MOTHER AND SON Life at Camden Place — The Prince's coming of age — Arenenberg — Correspondence with Cardinal de Bonnechose — Death of the Prince in Zululand — The farewell — Cardinal Manning's sermon . 259 CHAPTER XIV THE LONELY YEARS The Empress and Queen Victoria — The visit to South Africa — Life at Farnborough — The memorial church ..... 280 GENEALOGIES The Scots ancestry of the Empress Eugenie . . . . .301 The Empress Eugenie's association with the Houses of Stuart and Guelph 302 INDEX 3^3 xv CHAPTER I SCOTTISH AND SPANISH ANCESTRY OF THE EMPRESS The Dumfries-shire Kirkpatricks — The Kirkpatricks and Old Mortality — William Kirkpatrick of Malaga — Spanish ancestry of the Empress — Her father and mother — The Countess of Monti jo — Prosper Merimee — Granada — The birth of Eugenie. THE first thought that must occur to any English writer who attempts to tell the story of the Empress Eugenie is, What would Queen Victoria have said ? The greatest sovereign in Europe held out the hand of sisterly kindness to Napoleon III and his consort when they were driven to our shores thirty-six years ago as discrowned and homeless fugitives. The Empress, like our late beloved Queen, was a widow before the age of fifty. Her hopes were centred in the young boy whom thousands of French people still yearned after as " le petit Prince," and for whom, before the war, there had opened a dazzling future as Napoleon IV. In the darkest hours of the Empress's life Queen Victoria was her tender friend. If lover and ac- quaintance stood afar off, there was consolation for her in that royal heart. When the darling son had perished in obscure African warfare, it was the sympathy of the Queen which strengthened her to endure her terrible bereavement. The fact that the Empress Eugenie has lived for Scottish and Spanish Ancestry half a lifetime as an honoured guest in England destroys for us that disposition to merciless criticism which characterizes some foreign biographers. Stu- dents of the memoirs of the Second Empire are startled by the ruthless cruelty with which certain writers assail the wife of Napoleon, but, looking more closely, we discover that the sharpest censures come from disappointed office-holders, supporters of the old regime, or out-and-out Republicans. The wind of time has blown away these heavy odours. The Empress is no longer blamed for the errors of her husband. The historian of the Second Empire, M. Pierre de la Gorce, says in the preface to his great book that Napoleon III was before all things a conspirator and a dreamer. The sentence, " In the long leisure of his captivity he had dulled himself in dreams," suggests a modern Barbarossa, waiting in the fortress of Ham for the hour when the ravens should cease to hover round the peak and the pear- tree blossom in the valley. " He was a dreamer and a conspirator on the throne and always." The illustrious partner of his throne was no conspirator, and her dreams were the pure visions which float over the cradle of an only son. Even in France the voice of calumny has long been stilled. Imbert de Saint -Amand wrote ten years ago : " By the very excess of the calamities whose weight ennobles her, the widow of Napoleon III has disarmed envy, and when she passes through the city where once she reigned with so much splendour, there is a sort of tacit agreement, a truce of God, between all parties and all the journals to avoid dis- tressing her." France and the Empress Eugenie The Empress visited Paris in the year when the Austrian Archduchess Christina was passing through on her way to her bridal with Alphonso XII. Her presence, said one writer, was a memento mori, a shadow on the bride's noontide hour. Such a thought would scarcely find expression to-day. The younger generation of Republicans cherishes no resentment against the fairy queen who led the revels through the long enchanted night from which France woke to the weeping dawn which heralded her day of greatness. The Empress, who completed her eightieth year in May, 1906, leads a life so unobtrusive that we think of her as already half withdrawn into the shadows. The stars of memory and hope gild her tranquil eventide, the memory of past joy untouched with anguish — for it is the privilege of old age to remember the worst sorrows but as waters that pass away — the hope of reunion with the loved and lost. " The dwellers at the North Pole," says Jean Paul, " in their long winter when the sun never rises, see at midnight a faint light tinging the highest peaks, and they think of their long summer when the sun never sets." For that aged lady — Queen Victoria's friend — thousands in France and Britain will offer at some, let us hope, still distant day, the prayer of an early French poet, Charles of Orleans : — Dieu, sur tout souverain Seigneur, Ordonnez, par grace et doulceur, De Fame d'elle, lellcment, Qu'elle ne soit pas longuement En paine, soussi et doleur. Scottish and Spanish Ancestry When Napoleon III announced his approaching marriage in January, 1853, he stated frankly that the bride he had chosen was not of royal blood, but he hastened to add that she was the daughter of an illustrious house. As the descendant of noble Scottish and Spanish families, Eugenie de Monti jo, Countess of Teba, was fitted to mate with a Bona- parte. By the great calling of her birth, not less than by her beauty and high qualities of soul, she was worthy to share a throne. That learned Dumfries-shire antiquary, the late Mr. William McDowall, believed that the Kirk- patricks belonged to the old Scoto-Irish or Scoto- Saxon population of the county. Tradition avers that they descended from the giant Finn MacCual, King of the Fenians about 200 a.d. The founder of the Closeburn house was Ivon Kirkpatrick, who received the estate from Alex- ander II by a charter dated 5 August, 1232. Three centuries before Alexander's reign, one or more Dumfries-shire parishes had the name of Kirk- patrick. The most notable figure in the mediaeval records of the house was Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, great-grandson of Ivon, the knight of the deadly dagger, who on 10 February, 1306, slew the red Comyn in the church of the Greyfriars at Dumfries. We remember from our childhood's histories how Robert Bruce, after the fatal quarrel, rushed to his companions, Roger Kirkpatrick and John de Linde- say, crying, " I must be gone, for I doubt I have slain Comyn ! " " Do you doubt ? " cried Roger ; " then I'll mak siccar." Hurrying back, he found the bleeding victim behind the high altar, where The Kirkpatricks of Closeburn the monks had carried him, and stabbed him to death with many blows. Hence the motto and crest of the Kirkpatricks, " I mak siccar " (or, in later times, " I make sure "), with a hand grasping a dagger. The earlier crest of the house was a thistle, with the words, " Tich and I perce." " I make sure " is the form registered at the Heralds' Office upon the patent of baronetcy. In 1484 a younger son of the Kirkpatricks won from James III the lands of Kirkmichael in Dum- fries-shire, as a reward for his gallantry in fighting against the English at the battle of Burnswark Hill, where he captured the Earl of Douglas. Wil- liam Kirkpatrick, grandfather of the Empress Eu- genie, belonged to the Kirkmichael branch of the family. The first baronet was Thomas Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, who received the honour in 1685, as the reward of his devotion to the Stuarts. It is re- ported that Sir Thomas, whose family had been Protestant for more than a century, and who did his best for peace at the Revolution, was offered a peerage by William III, with the style and title of Earl of Closeburn. He declined the distinction, probably because, unlike some greedy courtiers of that period, he dreaded the nickname of " turncoat." Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick was no more a turncoat than was Henry Morton in Old Mortality. We read with pleasure how he sheltered the Covenanters in the lonely glen of Crichope Linn, on his estate, " a romantic scene of rocks, thickets, and cascades." The enthusiasts, says Sir Walter Scott, " judged s Scottish and Spanish Ancestry- it safer to face the apparitions by which the place was thought to be haunted, than to expose them- selves to the rage of their mortal enemies." Dr. Robert Simpson, in his Traditions of the Covenanters, tells that a party of troopers was sent to the house of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick to ask for help in searching for Whigs in the woods. Sir Thomas agreed, but was careful to go by the foot- paths, while the troopers took the more circuitous roads. In a solitary spot he found a sleeping man, and with his staff he carefully covered him with brackens from the prying eyes of the dragoons. His action was observed, and one of the soldiers asked what he was doing. The baronet haughtily replied, " May I not turn over the loose brackens and leaves in my own forest without asking your permission ? " The head of the Kirkmichael branch was less politic than Sir Thomas, for he failed to adapt him- self to the changed world. William Kirkpatrick sold the estate and died in 1686. His elder son, George, escaped in 1690 in an open boat from Gallo- way to the Giant's Causeway, and founded the flourishing clan of the Kirkpatricks in Ireland. A younger son, Robert, was beheaded for following Prince Charlie (1747). Robert's son William had nineteen children, of whom one, William Kirk- patrick, of Malaga (1764-1837), was the grandfather of the Empress. The main line of the Kirkpatricks continues in the person of the ninth baronet, Sir Charles Sharpe Kirkpatrick, who succeeded his father in 1899. The late Sir James Kirkpatrick was a clerk in the Admiralty, who had served with distinction in the "Old Mortality" Navy. More than a century has passed since Close- burn, or Kilosbern, as it was called in ancient times, passed out of the possession of his family. The house had been plundered in 1570 by the Earl of Sussex, and in 1646 by the Douglases. The greatest disaster came in 1748, when the mansion was de- stroyed by fire. All the family portraits and furni- ture, with the principal papers and documents, were consumed. The baronet of the day lived after the catastrophe in the keep, but in 1783 that historic tower, with the lands belonging to it, was sold to pay creditors. The village of Closeburn has more than one traditional connection with the Bonapartes. Robert Paterson, known as " Old Mortality," was a native of the parish, and his wife served as a cook in the family of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, the first baronet. It was through the good offices of Sir Thomas that the mason Robert Paterson obtained from the Duke of Queensbury a lease of the quarry of Gatelowbrigg, whence he hewed those sepulchral stones by which " he kept in remembrance the righteous whose dust had been gathered to their fathers." John Paterson, the youngest of the three sons of " Old Mortality," went to America in the year 1776, and eventually settled at Baltimore. It was long be- lieved that the Elizabeth Patterson who married Prince Jerome Bonaparte was a daughter of John. The marriage was not acknowledged in France, and the lady was repudiated by her husband. Sir Walter Scott was strongly interested in the story, though he doubted its authenticity. Writing to Mr. Train, he said : "I shall hardly venture to 7 Scottish and Spanish Ancestry mention the extraordinary connection between the Bonaparte family and that of ' Old Mortality ' till I learn from you how it is made out, whether by continued correspondence between the families of the two brothers or otherwise." The story gained credence the more readily be- cause two American gentleman, early in the last century, visited the grave of " Old Mortality," say- ing that they had been sent by Madame Bonaparte. In the memoirs of the Rev. Nathaniel Paterson, d.d., published in 1874, we find the definite contradiction of a legend which often reappears to this day in newspapers. Dr. Paterson was a grandson of " Old Mortality " and a friend of Sir Walter Scott, His son, the Rev. Nathaniel Paterson, settled in Canada, and went to Baltimore in 1873 on purpose to inquire into the Bonaparte legend. He found Mr. Penning- ton, the lawyer who drew up the will of Madame Bonaparte's father, and was permitted to examine it for himself. The name of the father was shown to be William, not John, Patterson, of Tanat, county Donegal, Ireland. He had been brought up in con- nection with the Episcopal Church, and had seven sons and one daughter after his settlement at Balti- more. In the will he mentioned his daughter as " Betsey," and as the wife of Jerome Bonaparte. We must reluctantly, therefore, abandon this curious tradition, according to which the wife of a second Bonaparte might have claimed ancestral connection with Closeburn. It is, as the biographer of Dr, Paterson observes, too good a story to die easily — the granddaughter of " Old Mortality " united by marriage to one of the reigning houses of Europe, 8 William Kirkpatrick of Malaga and her Aunt Margaret living in poverty in the village of Balmaclellan ! The grandfather of the Empress Eugenie settled as a fruit and wine merchant at Malaga. He main- tained connection with his Irish relatives, sent them presents, and once visited Dublin. In 1814 he wrote : " When an opportunity occurs of recom- mending my house, I beg you will not fail to do so to any of your friends in the habit of speculating in this quarter." He was a keen man of business, who sold his wines personally to customers in a parlour at the back of his shop. This room became a kind of club, frequented by the young officers of the town and by foreign visitors. Washington Irving, writing in 1853, says : "I knew the grandfather of the Em- press, old Mr. Kirkpatrick, who had been American Consul at Malaga. I passed an evening at his house in 1827, near Adra, on the coast of the Mediterranean. A week or two after, I was at the house of his son- in-law, the Count Teba, at Granada — a gallant, in- telligent gentleman, much cut up in the wars, having lost an eye and been maimed in a leg and hand. His wife, the daughter of Mr. Kirkpatrick, was absent, but he had a family of little girls, mere children, about him. The youngest of these must be the present Empress." William Kirkpatrick and all his descendants were Roman Catholics. A Protestant would never have been admitted, as he was, into the best Andalusian society. The present English cemetery of Malaga dates only from 1830. Before that time the Pro- testants were laid in the sand of the beach, where the bodies were sometimes uncovered by the action Scottish and Spanish Ancestry of waves and winds. The English church at Malaga was erected in 1891. One of the leading residents when Kirkpatrick settled there was Henri, Baron de Grivegnee, a wealthy merchant, whose family belonged to the Netherlands. They were, like the Kirkpatricks, of distinguished standing in their own country, and ancestors of theirs had been several times enrolled among the aldermen of Liege. Henri came to Spain as a young man, and married Dona Antonia de Gallegos. They had two daughters, Francoise and Catherine. The latter married M. Mathieu de Lesseps, father of Ferdinand de Lesseps, of Suez Canal fame ; the former became the wife of William Kirkpatrick, and grandmother of the Empress Eugenie. Ferdinand de Lesseps was not, as has sometimes been stated, the son of " one of the Ma- laga Kirkpatricks," though he was the first cousin of the Empress Eugenie's mother. The following table shows their relationship : — Henri de Grivegnee married Antonia de Gallegos. Francoise de Grivegnee Catherine de Grivegnee married William married Mathieu Kirkpatrick de Lesseps I I I Manuela, Countess of Ferdinand de Lesseps. Montij o I The Empress Eugenie. Ferdinand de Lesseps was nineteen years older than the Empress Eugenie. He was deeply attached to her, and in his will left directions that a silver cup she had given him should never go out of the family. 10 Mr. Kirkpatrick's Daughters We shall find him at her side in the crisis of 1870. His mother, Madame Mathieu de Lesseps, died in the Rue Joubert on 27 January, 1853, three days before the marriage of her great-niece, Eugenie de Montijo, with Napoleon III. William Kirkpatrick had three daughters, who helped him in his business, and were much admired for their beauty by the members of the informal " club " behind the shop. One of the three, Carlotta Catalina, married her cousin Thomas James, son of John Kirkpatrick of Conheath. Another, Henriquita, married the Count de Cabarrus. The third, Maria Manuela, made a match of far greater brilliancy. Her hus- band, Don Cipriano Guzman de Palafox y Porto- carrero, Count of Teba, belonged to one of the oldest and most illustrious houses in Spain. By the death of his elder brother in 1834 he became Count of Montijo, and inherited for the first time wealth sufficient to support his rank. The Guzmans trace their descent from the early days of the Spanish monarchy. One of their heroes was Alonzo Perez de Guzman, who, as Governor of Tarifa, defended the town against the Infante Don Juan, then in revolt against his brother, Sancho IV, King of Castile. Don Juan had taken prisoner the son of Alonzo Perez, and threatened to kill the boy unless the citadel were surrendered. Alonzo's answer was to fling down a cutlass. Hence the motto of the Guzmans, " Mas pesa el rey que la sangre " — " My King before my Kin." The elder brother of the Count of Teba has been described as a Spanish Mirabeau. He was a bitter 1 1 Scottish and Spanish Ancestry enemy of France and a leader of revolt at home. In March, 1808, he entered the palace of Aranjuez at the head of a small force, and tried to prevent King Charles IV from leaving. M. Thiers mentions the incident in his History of the Consulate and Empire. " The throng at Aranjuez was extreme, and the most sinister and strange faces began to appear there. A singular personage, persecuted at Court, who united to the birth and fortune of a great noble the art and inclination to move the popular masses, was in the midst of this crowd, ready to give the signal for the insurrection." That nobleman was the Count of Monti jo, uncle of the Empress. Don Cipriano, the younger brother, offered his sword to Napoleon and became a colonel of artillery in the French service. During the defence of Paris in 1814 he commanded the pupils of the Ecole Poly- technique, and was the last to fire the guns from the heights of Montmartre. Colonel Portocarrero, as he was called by his comrades, had lost an eye in the battle of Salamanca, and notwithstanding his ad- vantages of blood and lineage, he was hardly, either in person or intellect, a suitor likely to attract a young and beautiful girl such as Manuela Kirk- patrick. She met him for the first time, it is said, at the house of her aunt, Madame de Lesseps, in Paris. William Kirkpatrick had given his daughter a Parisian education, and she had natural gifts which won for her in later years the admiring friendship of the chief literary men of the day. Manuela realized the immense advantages of a marriage with a grandee of Spain, and she considered herself, though the daughter of a merchant, in no way in- 12 A Brilliant Marriage ferior socially to the Count of Teba. Mr. Kirk- patrick said to his future son-in-law : " You can trace up to Alfonzo XI ; if I trace to Robert Bruce, I suppose His Majesty will be satisfied." He laid before King Ferdinand VII a patent from the Heralds' Office in Edinburgh, certifying his descent from the ancient Barons of Closeburn. " Let the good man marry the daughter of Fingal," exclaimed Ferdinand. The Count of Montijo was highly dis- pleased with his brother's choice, and himself took a wife, in hope of handing on the title in the elder line. The Countess of Teba acted with much dis- cretion towards her sister-in-law, and in time even the proud Montijo accepted her as one of the family. The marriage of the Empress Eugenie's mother took place on 15 December, 1817. Her husband's age was thirty-two. Rumour insisted that the gaiety and extravagance of Manuela were displeasing to Count Teba, and that domestic reasons explained his departure from Ma- laga to Granada. His ideas ran in narrow grooves ; he wished his daughters to be brought up cheaply, as if destined to a humble lot. He made few friends, and left to his wife the task of entertaining. The beautiful Countess had a host of men acquaintances, attracted by her wit, her grace, and her lively, vivacious manners. George Ticknor, the historian of Spanish literature, has described the mother of the Empress as he saw her in 1818 at Malaga. " I do not doubt, he says, " that she is the most culti- vated and the most interesting woman in Spain." She had been carefully educated by her mother, whom he mistakenly calls " a Scotchwoman." '3 Scottish and Spanish Ancestry " Possessing extraordinary talents, and giving an air of originality to all that she says and does, she unites in a most bewitching manner the Andalusian grace and frankness to a French facility in her manners, and the genuine English thoroughness in her know- ledge and accomplishments. She knows the five chief modern languages well, and feels their different characters, and estimates their literatures aright ; she has the foreign accomplishments of singing, play- ing, painting, etc., and the national one of dancing, in a high degree. In conversation she is brilliant and original ; and yet with all this she is a true Spaniard, and as full of Spanish feelings as she is of talent and culture." Thirty years later M. de Puibusque, author of UHistoire Compar^e des Literatures espagnole et franpaise, meeting Mr. Ticknor in Boston, spoke with admiration of the Countess de Montijo, praising her talents and accomplishments. Mr. Ticknor explained that he knew of but one lady in Spain to whom such a description could apply, and had believed her to be the only one, but she was Countess of Teba. His friend explained that it was the same person, under a title inherited later. The letters of Prosper Merimee are the richest source of information about this remarkable woman. Merimee visited Spain for the first time in 1830, and made the acquaintance of the Count of Teba on a stage-coach journey. The soldier, we may imagine, described the battles of the Peninsular War to the French author, who was, like himself, a Napoleon enthusiast. He invited the young man to his house in the Calle del Sordo, Madrid, and there was laid 14 Prosper Merimee the foundation of the lifelong friendship between Merimee and the Countess. No legendary Princess of the Alhambra had a more willing servant than she found in this stranger from Paris. For him the glory and romance of southern Spain were realized in one astonishing vision. He was enchanted with her grace, her freshness, the keenness and activity of her intellect, her wit and readiness in talk. She knew Spanish literature and history, told him stories of the Alhambra and the Generalife. It was the Countess who suggested two of his principal works, Carmen and Don Pedro. Merimee appreciated the practical qualities of his friend, and had good reason to be grateful for them. When he was gathering materials for Don Pedro she told him where the in- formation might be found, and worried on his behalf the sleepy custodians of archives. " Whatever you may say about it," wrote Meri- mee in 1847, " you are made for battle, and it would be ridiculous to wish for Caesar the peaceful life of the second citizen of Rome." Elsewhere he speaks of her courage and her " bonne tete." After the widowhood of the Countess, the frequent visits of Merimee to her house at Madrid and to her chateau of Carabanchel gave rise to some gossip, but we have his testimony in a letter written to his friend Beyle, that although the Countess was a dear friend, there had never been any question of love between them. There is one undated note, written evidently in a sulky mood, which may refer to whispers he had heard from Madrid. " I do not know if the Countess of Montijo is still pretty ; in my time she was, and virtuous into the bargain. It is possible that she '5 Scottish and Spanish Ancestry may have lost these two qualities." Such a passing breath of ill-humour cannot detract from the loyal friendship which this eminent writer consecrated to his princess of 1830, and which he transferred to her children, and especially to Eugenie. Nothing can be more graceful than the picture drawn by M. Filon of the Empress walking in the Tuileries Gardens in 1868 with a little old gentleman by her side who called himself sometimes " le bouffon de Sa Majeste," but whom she treated with the tenderness and con- fidence of a daughter. It must have been a trying journey from Malaga to Granada for the Count of T£ba and his young wife. Mr. Hare, who travelled by the same route in 1871, complains of the roughness of the road. " At Las Salinas two diligences were waiting for us, not nearly enough for the great number of passengers, so the crowding was dreadful. The road from hence was a mere track, broken in some places into deep quagmires and pools of water, mended in others by great lumps of rock thrown loosely down anyhow. Through and over these we floundered, thumped, jolted, and crashed, in a way which was absolutely frightful, especially when a precipice at the side, dimly seen through the night, added to the dangers. Every one was occupied in holding on as they best could. No one had time to think of the robbers, though many were known to be about, and we had an armed escort hanging on behind." But the perils of the way must have been forgotten when the travellers at length beheld The old rain-fretted mountains in their robes Of shadow-broken grey ; the rounded hills 16 Birth of the Empress Reddened with blood of Titans, whose huge limbs Entombed within, feed full the hardy flesh Of cactus green and blue-sworded aloes ; The cypress soaring black above the lines Of white court-walls ; the pointed sugar-canes Pale-golden with their feathers motionless In the warm quiet. The city of Granada has altered little in size during the last eighty years. The Calle de Gratia, where the Count of Teba lived, is in the aristocratic quarter near the outskirts, and is terminated by the Placeta de Gratia, which contains the buildings of a secula- rized convent. To reach the Calle de Gratia from the Alhambra, we go by the Plaza Nueva to the principal Moorish street, " El Zacatin," which passes near the cathedral and the Archbishop's palace. A few turnings lead us to the Church of Santa Maria Magdalena, nearly opposite to which is the house (No. 12) in which, as a marble tablet informs us, Eugenia de Guzman y Portocarrero, wife of Napoleon III, was born in 1826. The tablet was erected by the municipality in 1867, to " the Empress of the French, its noble compatriot." Maria Eugenia Ignacia Augustina was born on 5 May, 1826, during an earthquake which shook the city. A golden-haired child, she had from infancy a pensive, melancholy, wondering gaze — " ce regard de predestine," says a French writer, which Paris saw thirty years later in the eyes of her son. Eu- genio, Count of Monti jo, had become reconciled to his sister-in-law, for he consented to act as godfather to his younger niece. 17 CHAPTER II EUGENIE S GIRLHOOD Her childhood in Spain — Early years in Paris — Stendhal and Merimee — Death of Eugenie's father — Louis Napoleon — His projects of marriage — The hunting parties at Compiegne — Eugenie at Court — First rumours of the engagement. UNTIL the age of eight the little Eugenie lived happily in the nursery at Granada, and in the Calle del Sordo at Madrid. The brother and sister, who were the playmates of her childhood, were destined to a lot far different from her own. The boy Paco, who should have inherited the ancient glories of the Guzmans, faded like a flower under the hot morning beams. The elder sister, married at nine- teen to the Duke of Alba, died in the prime of woman- hood, and has been survived by the Empress for more than forty years. The first disturbance of Count Teba's family life came in 1834, when, by the death of his elder brother Eugenio, he succeeded to the title of Count of Montijo. The new rank carried with it, not only the abundant wealth for lack of which Count Tuba's life had so long been " bound in shallows and in miseries," but other splendid old-world titles, such as the dukedom of Peharanda. At the time of the Empress's mar- riage, French writers pointed out that the widowed mother, who called herself Countess of Montijo, had 18 The Flight from Madrid an equal right to the title " Duchess of Penaranda," but that the custom, among the Spanish nobility, is to choose, as a titular distinction, the oldest dignity conferred upon their house. The disturbances of 1834 drove the Countess of Montij o and her children from Madrid. The Count, who had become a senator by the death of his brother, remained behind to help in the re-establishment of public order. Gossips have hinted that the gay and brilliant Countess, now for the first time possessed of an income adequate to her ambition, was not sorry to escape from the society of her narrow- minded and jealous husband, from the fierce and quarrelsome Spanish Court, to the larger and more easy life of Paris. She passed through Perpignan, and made the acquaintance of the Governor, the Marechal de Castellane. In his journal for 20 July, 1834, M. de Castellane wrote : " Many Spaniards are passing through Perpignan ; most of them come from Madrid, and are on their way to Toulouse ; they are flying from cholera and the civil war. The Countess of Teba, a woman of thirty-five — extremely intelligent — is going to Toulouse. She has a very considerable fortune. Her husband has remained at Madrid for the session of the Cortes. Madame de Teba did not leave Madrid till the 18th ; she saw dreadful things done there. The City Guard maimed and assassinated the monks and the Jesuits, even in their churches. The troops of the line were under arms, but looked on without interfering." Madame de T£ba spoke of the situation in Spain as frightful, famine being threatened in addition to other miseries. When the marriage of Napoleon III and Made- 19 Eugenie's Girlhood moiselle de Monti jo was announced in January, 1853, the veteran Marshal de Castellane wrote to one of his daughters : " For my part I am glad to hear it. I little thought, when her mother brought her to me at Perpignan, on 29 July, 1834, holding by the hand Eugenie and her sister — for she had with her two little girls and a little boy called Paco — that she would one day be Empress of the French. At that time I gave the Countess of Monti jo, who was flying from Spain, letters of introduction to our relations at Toulouse. I see in looking up my notes that her age was then from thirty to thirty-five. She was tall, well preserved, and remarkably clever." Between 1834 and 1839 the Countess of Montijo and her children spent much time in Paris. Amongst their new friends the most distinguished was Count Alexandre de Laborde, in whose learned circle they met Henri Beyle (known to literature as Stendhal), and renewed their acquaintance with Prosper Meri- mee. Writers on the childhood of the Empress must acknowledge a debt to M. Augustin Filon, tutor of the Prince Imperial, who was permitted twelve years ago to examine the still unpublished correspondence of Merimee with the Countess of Montijo. These letters cover a period of thirty years (1839-70). From the Empress herself M. Filon learned that she and her sister Paca owed much to their pleasant intercourse in childhood with great writers like Beyle and Merimee, and we know from other sources that she often recalled in later life the inspiring stories told while she and Paca sat on Stend- hal's knees. He had served as a dragoon under Napoleon, and his talk was full of warlike remi- 20 Eugenie and Stendhal niscences. He could call up before the eyes of the children the figure of the great Emperor, a captain dearly loved by their father, who was now alone in stormy Madrid. " The children were born Bona- partists in that family/' says M. Filon. " The Empress has more than once told me that the even- ings when M. Beyle came were specially good times. ' We awaited them impatiently, because we were sent to bed rather later on these nights, and his stories amused us so much ! ' " Readers of Stend- hal's principal work, La Chartreuse de Parme, will recall the description of the battle of Waterloo. The hero in the little hat and the grey coat appeared in many of his narratives. We can imagine four bright eyes shining as the children heard how one day the violets might be wreathed again round the Imperial crown of France, and the awe-stricken faces as the old cavalryman told perhaps of a nightly re- view, in which Napoleon still received the homage of vast armies of the dead. Beyle gave the girls pictures to illustrate his tales, and M. Filon mentions that the Empress still preserves one of the battle of Austerlitz, presented by her friend. The portrait of Stendhal by Dreux d'Orcy, in the museum of his birthplace, Grenoble, suggests quali- ties which attract the young. There is infinite humour in that mocking but kindly mouth, infinite fancy in the keen dark eyes and lofty brow. In the companionship of his little friends he threw aside his affectation of cynicism, and all the queer manner- isms — the frequent glances in the looking-glass, the display of his small, well-shaped hands — which amused his grown-up contemporaries. Beyle died 21 Eugenie's Girlhood in 1842, while the future Empress was still a school- girl. Eugenie showed an early talent for drawing, and her crayon portraits were admired. Years after- wards she is said to have contributed, under an assumed name, a design for the new Opera House. Her spelling, by her own admission, was not a strong point. " In eight pages," she writes to a friend, " sprinkled with mistakes in spelling, which give originality to my letters, I have proved that I forget myself in writing to you." Prosper Merimee watched over her early education, corrected her French exercises, and gave her writing lessons. To the end of his life the Empress called him, respectfully, " Monsieur Merimee," though all Paris, all Europe, knew him simply as Merimee. The little girls went out walking with their friend, and the beauty of the golden-haired Eugenie even then attracted admiring glances. Their wanderings often ended at a confectioner's door, where Meri- mee would regale his young friends with cakes and sweets. The thought must occur to the student of Meri- mee' s books and voluminous correspondence, was he the best companion for two young girls, one of whom was destined to a throne ? When we turn from the eloquent and sympathetic pages of M. Filon's Mdrimde et ses Amis to the colder estimates of other French critics — above all, when we ex- amine the Lettres a une Inconnue, and the Letters to Panizzi, we feel that Merimee was not a man of high ideals or ennobling principle. The motto en- graved upon his seal, ^vad airiarelu " Remember 22 Eugenie and Merimee to Distrust," was a poor and selfish gospel for the man who guided the early years of an empress. Merimee was a well-known figure during the season in London society, a frequenter of the Athenaeum, the friend of statesmen and writers. On one oc- casion he was the guest of Mr. Gladstone ; and, in a letter describing the visit, goes out of his way to sneer at morning prayers, and to grumble at the breakfast rolls, " from which one suffered all day after." On his first journey to Spain he found " indescribable pleasure " in the bull-fights. In religion an avowed sceptic, he caused grave scandal by arranging with Sainte-Beuve and other literary friends for a banquet on the most solemn day of the Christian year. Gambetta called the group " ri- pailleurs des vendredis saints " — Good Friday revel- lers. Maxime Du Camp, in his Literary Souvenirs, says of Merimee that he was easily impressed by great people and naturally obsequious to them. " He showed the Empress all respect before her face, but when out of her hearing would speak of her fami- liarly as ' Eugenie.' " This was a habit that Merimee had learned in Spain. In January, 1853, amid the chorus of detraction which malicious voices raised against the Emperor Napoleon's lovely bride, the most ridiculous statement was that Eugenie allowed her men friends to call her by her Christian name. It was pointed out in reply that in the highest circles of Madrid the Countess of Teba was known even to her acquaintances as " Eugenie." Maxime Du Camp was strongly prejudiced against Merimee. He notes his vein of Rabelaisian humour, 23 Eugenie's Girlhood and the dislike which he inspired in George Sand. " He had a fancy for having his clothes made in England, and the ungraceful cut of the thick cloth added to the stiffness of his appearance." Merimee might have retorted that he was a customer of Poole, the most fashionable tailor in London. " Merimee is a gentleman ! " said Victor Cousin, who owed him many a kindness. " No one else thought so," grumbles M. Du Camp. The truth is that this cynical and witty writer never exerted himself to secure the goodwill of the literary pro- fession, and never paid court to younger men. His manner to his equals was stiff, haughty, suspicious. The son of an unsuccessful artist, the grandson of a country lawyer, he expanded genially in the society of aristocrats, and was at home under palace roofs. The best characteristic of Merimee was his love of children. Florence Nightingale, " la petite Flo," played with him as a very little girl in an English country house-party. Late in life he expressed the wish to adopt a daughter. The magic of his genius, the tender playfulness of his talk, won from the beginning the heart of Eugenie de Montijo. In a letter written to Dr. Veron at the time of his appointment as a Senator, Merimee tells the story of their early friendship. " You know my whole history as well as I do. Chance sent me to Spain for relaxation, and there I met very good and kindly people, who received me hospitably. I met there a little girl to whom I told stories. I begged her off when she did not know her lessons, and later on I preached sermons to her with three heads, for I am very hard on young folk. One day this little Death of Eugenie's Father girl told me she was going to marry the Emperor. I entreated her to make me take a solemn oath that I would never ask anything from her. After some discussion she made me take the oath with much solemnity. The Emperor, at her request, wished to give me a very good post where there would be much to do. I begged him to leave me to my monu- ments, where I was more at liberty. The Empress then said to me in Spanish, ' We will give you some- thing else ; if you don't accept that, you are our enemy.' That is how I lost my old freedom." In March, 1839, the Countess of Montijo received a message announcing her husband's serious illness. After a five-years' separation she left Paris in haste to rejoin him. Her young daughters had been placed, two years earlier, in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Rue de Varennes, where they were known by their surname of Palafox. Finding, when she reached Madrid, that her husband was dangerously ill, the Countess sent for them. Accompanied by their English governess, Miss Flowers, they set off by stage-coach on 17 March. Their kind friend Merimee begged for a letter on the journey, and from Oloron, where bad weather detained the travellers, the thirteen-year-old Eu- genie wrote him a pretty note on ruled paper. The children never saw their father alive. He had passed away before they left Paris, on 15 March, 1839. Middle-aged French people can still remember the actions taken by the Countess of Montijo, after the fall of the Empire, against newspapers winch had published false statements with regard to her married life and the date of her husband's death. From Eugenie's Girlhood some papers she obtained damages, and from nearly all apologies. The documents, copied from Spanish registers, which attest the date of her wedding, the baptism of her two daughters, and the death of the Count of Monti jo, were published in 1877 in a pamphlet en- titled U Intptratrice : Notes et Documents. The widowed Countess was the mistress of a great fortune, and a position of influence opened to her at the Spanish Court. When the period of mourning ended, she embarked on the social enjoyments which from girlhood had been dear to her, and which had been denied hitherto through lack of means. Her time was divided between her town house in the Plaza del Angel and her country estate of Cara- banchel. Washington Irving describes one of her balls in the capital. " When I had recently taken up my abode in Madrid," he says, " I was invited to a grand ball at the house of the Countess Monti jo — one of the leaders of the ton. On making my bow to her, I was surprised at being received with the warmth and eagerness of an old friend. She claimed me as the friend of her late husband, the Comte Teba (subsequently Marquis Montijo), who, she said, had often spoken of me with the greatest regard. She took me into another room, and showed me a minia- ture of the Count, such as I had known him, with a black patch over one eye. She subsequently intro- duced me to the little girls I had known at Granada — now fashionable belles at Madrid. After this I was frequently at her house, which was one of the gayest in the capital. The Countess and her daugh- 26 Life at Carabanchel ters all spoke English. The elder daughter was married, while I was in Madrid, to the Duke of Alva and Berwick, the lineal successor to the pretender to the British Crown. The younger now sits on the throne of France." In Merimee's Lettres a une Inconnue we have a hint of the uses to which the girls put their devoted friend in Paris. " I have been hunting over the whole town," he says, " to buy dresses and hats, and for Wednesday I have made an appointment to order a fancy shepherdess costume. These things are all for the two daughters of Madame . Ad- vise me. What costume ought they to have for a fancy ball ? A Highland lass and a Polish peasant are already sent off. I have a shepherdess, but I still need another dress. The elder girl is a brunette, pale, not quite as tall as you, very pretty, with a gay expression. The younger is very tall, very fair, marvellously lovely, with the hair that Titian loved. I want to make her a shepherdess with powdered hair. Advise me about the other." At Carabanchel the Countess of Montijo and her daughters enjoyed a life of merry freedom. A rural theatre on the estate was in frequent use for plays and operas. M. Filon says of the Countess, " She made every- body sing and dance ; she married people and amused them to her dying day. She scattered pleasure, she imposed happiness around her." Merimee visited Spain for the second time in 1840, and was the guest of the Countess at Carabanchel. He was pressed into her service at the theatre as scene-painter, stage-shifter, prompter, and manager. Writing to 37 Eugenie's Girlhood the Inconnue, he remarks, " I was alone with six women, of whom the eldest was thirty-six, and I was not in love with any of them." From Paris, on his return, he sent flower seeds for the gardener at Carabanchel, and Chinese lan- terns for the open-air festivals. Large parcels often accompanied his weekly letters, which were passed through the Foreign Office. In return the Countess sent him a particular kind of Spanish loaf which she considered more wholesome than Paris bread. She also sent matches, which were then, as now, dear in the French capital. At the Court of Isabella II the Countess of Montijo was for a time eagerly welcomed. In 1847 she held for three months the post of camarera mayor, or first lady of honour. Her friends learned with anxiety that she was accustomed to drive out alone in a phaeton with the Queen, who might at any moment become a mark for the assassin. As a result of some obscure intrigue, the Countess left her position at the end of three months. Merimee dedicated to her his history of Don Pedro I, published in 1848. The honour was well deserved, for the Countess had explained to him the peculiarities of the Mozara- bic ritual, the ancient feudal customs of Spain, and the meaning of obsolete mediaeval words. " I am confounded by your learning," he wrote, and again, " I have accustomed myself to regard you as my providence." When Don Pedro was published, the Countess had achieved one object of her ambition by ar- ranging a great marriage for her elder daughter. The bridegroom, who signed himself James Stuart, 28 The Duchess of Alba Duke of Berwick y Alba y Linares, was descended from Marshal Berwick, the victor of Almanza, who was a son of King James II and Arabella Churchill. The wedding of Eugenie's sister took place on 14 February, 1844. The story of that draught of poison which all but ended her own life has been told with varying circumstances. Some say that Eugenie was herself passionately in love with the Duke of Alba, and chancing to overhear his proposal to her sister, rushed to her room and in a fit of madness swallowed the deadly drink. According to others the nobleman whom she favoured was the Marquis of Alcanizes, a friend of the Duchess of Alba. The report of the attempt at suicide was mentioned in the papers on the eve of her wedding. Among the Spanish suitors for Eugenie's hand before she and her mother returned to Paris in 1849, the Duke of Ossuna was named. " She made a great impression in Madrid society," wrote M. de Mazade in the Revue des Deux Mondes at the moment of the Imperial marriage, " by her daring imagination and the ardent vivacity of her character. She impressed one by a sort of virile grace which might easily have made her a heroine of romance, and before assuming the Imperial diadem she proudly wore that crown of hair whose colour a Venetian painter would have loved." Clara Tschudi quotes the following description by an eye-witness of the youthful Countess as she appeared at a bull-fight in national costume : — " Her slender figure is set off by a costly bodice, which enhances her beauty and elegance. Her hand is armed with a riding-whip instead of a fan, for she 29 Eugenie's Girlhood generally arrives at the circus on a wild Andalusian horse, and in her belt she carries a sharp-pointed dagger. Her little feet are encased in red satin boots. Her head is crowned with her broad golden plaits, interwoven with pearls and rich flowers j her clear brow shines with youth and beauty, and her gentle blue eyes sparkle from beneath the long lashes which almost conceal them. Her exquisitely formed nose, her mouth, fresher than a rose-bud, the perfect oval of her face, the loveliness of which is only equalled by her graceful bearing, arouse the ad- miration of all. She is the recognized queen of beauty. It is she who crowns the victorious torea- dor, and her white hands present him with the prize due to his courage or agility, while she accom- panies her gift with the most captivating smile." The young girl, like her mother, took an eager interest in politics. It is said that the Spanish statesman, General Narvaez, overhearing her one day in earnest argument, interrupted her with the remark, " You ladies ought not to meddle with poli- tics, for if things came to the worst you would not have the nerve to face cold steel." " Would I not ? " cried Eugenie, and snatching a knife from the table she inflicted a stab on her arm ! In the outburst of defamatory gossip which assailed the Imperial lady more than once at critical moments in her career, stories were told of the careless freedom of her life at Madrid. Her mother, it must be admitted, had the Bohemian love of licence. She was a great lady, with something of the gipsy in her tastes and dis- position. But she knew very well, in Madrid, in Paris, in London, how to guard her beautiful girl, 30 The Empress and Lacordaire and never once, during her long life, has any serious scandal dimmed the fair fame of the Empress. It has been said that Lacordaire was Eugenie's favourite preacher. She heard him in girlhood during her occasional visits to Paris, but in her married life she had no opportunity of listening to him. After the coup d'dat, Lacordaire declined to preach any longer at Notre Dame. Writing to a friend, he said, " I thought it would not be possible for me to preach this winter amidst the silence of the press and of public opinion, without making the pulpit of Notre Dame a dangerous rendezvous for the friends and the enemies of the new Govern- ment. The burden of the time would have given me a constant opportunity to strike in with my sword against despotism, and these strokes would have been represented as heavier than I meant them to be. I preferred to keep silence. I thought this silence wise and dignified — my way of mourning for our lost liberties." M. d'Haussonville, in his Life of Lacordaire, re- marks with justice that it was the misfortune of the Second Empire to have closed the mouths of the men who were most generous in character, and most in- dependent in mind. Lacordaire preached one famous sermon at Saint Roch in 1853, the year of the Empress's marriage. He took as his text the words " Esto vir," and as his subject " greatness of char- acter." An immense congregation, filling nave and side chapels, assembled to hear him. He struck a hard blow against the Bonapartes. In that year of the dawning glory of the Second Empire he dared to say that Spain held the illustrious honour of having 3> Eugenie's Girlhood been the first cause of the ruin of the great Emperor and the delivery of the world. What did Eugenie think when she read these words ? The emotion of the crowd, says a listener, was like the sighing of the wind in the forest. It was feared that strong measures would be taken against the bold Dominican, but the Government stayed its hand. " Well I know," said Lacordaire, "that there is no need of an army to close my mouth. One soldier would be enough. But for the defence of my words, and the truth in them, God has given me something that can resist all the empires of this world." The great preacher died in November, 1861, The Countess of Montijo and her daughter were at Spa during the summer of 1849, and they spent the following winter in Brussels. They settled in Paris for the winter of 185 1-2, shortly before the coup d'tfat of December. By this act Louis Napoleon, son of Louis, King of Holland (brother of Napoleon I), and of Queen Hortense, a daughter of the Empress Josephine by her first marriage, became virtual sovereign of France. A year later, on 1 December, 1852, he was hailed as Emperor at St. Cloud by the members of the Senate and the Legislative Assembly. Nearly eight million Frenchmen had given their votes for him. The outlaw, the conspirator, the prisoner of Ham, was lifted by a dazzling revolution to the throne of the first Continental Power. The first rumour of Louis Napoleon's approaching marriage was circulated in 1835, and from his mother's home, the castle of Arenenberg, in Switzer- land, he wrote the following letter, addressed to the editor of a local newspaper : " Sir, — Several 32 X i EARLY PORTRAIT OF THE EMPRESS EUGENIE. \uguatin I Napoleon III as a Bachelor journals announce my departure for Portugal, in the quality of pretender to the hand of the Queen Doha Maria. However much I may feel flattered at the idea of a union with a young, pretty, and virtuous sovereign, the widow of a cousin who was dear to me, it is my duty to contradict the rumour. I may add that in spite of the interest which attaches me to a nation which has just acquired its liberty, I should certainly refuse to share the throne of Por- tugal, if by any chance the offer were made me. The noble conduct of my father, who abdicated in 1810 because he found it impossible to reconcile the interests of France with those of Holland, has never been eradicated from my mind. My father proved by a great example how preferable is one's native country to a foreign throne." A union was at one time planned between Louis Napoleon and his cousin Mathilde, daughter of Jerome, ex-King of Westphalia. While in England, he was said to be in love with Miss Emily Rowles, whom he met at Camden House. Everything, it was believed, was settled, and the Prince had be- stowed on the lady gifts which had belonged to the Empress Josephine ; but obstacles arose, the en- gagement was broken off, and Miss Rowles married an Italian marquis. When the adventurer of London had been trans- formed into the Prince-President of the French Republic, more illustrious matches were proposed. The Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden, who was by birth a Beauharnais and an aunt by adoption of Napoleon III, had three daughters, of whom the eldest married Prince Gustavus Vasa, son of Charles 33 Eugenie's Girlhood XIII of Sweden. This Prince became a general in the Austrian Army, and it was his daughter, Princess Carola (afterwards Queen of Saxony), whom Na- poleon desired to marry. The French ambassador at Vienna was charged with the arrangements, but could do nothing without the consent of the Austrian Court, which was unfavourable to the alliance. The Powers regarded Napoleon as an upstart and a usurper. They had no confidence in the stability of his throne, and cruel memories clouded the thought of a Bonaparte marriage. Royal houses which had been humbled in the dust by Napoleon's uncle could hardly be expected to send a daughter to grace his Imperial car. Among the many ambitious projects that crossed his mind was the dream of a union with Princess Mary of Cambridge, and when this was quietly but decidedly negatived by the Queen and Prince Albert, he turned to the idea of wedding a Hohenzollern princess. Bitterly indeed he must have resented these repeated humiliations, by which the reigning families shut him definitely out of their circle. The mortification was the keener because he well knew what joy these repulses must give to the Legitimist party in France, who looked on sullenly while the people, carried away in an ecstasy of en- thusiasm, inaugurated the Second Empire. Na- poleon's most experienced counsellors urged him, in default of a royal alliance, to choose a daughter of the old French nobility. All were agreed that the Court of the Tuileries must have a queen. Granier de Cassagnac, in his memoirs, speaks of the ardent desire for a young Empress which was felt by all classes in the beginning of 1853. She must 34 Napoleon and Eugenie meet be lovely, she must be Catholic, and it was felt that the Emperor might be trusted on both these points. But where should he find the lady ? French writers have discovered in the early child- hood of Eugenie de Montijo a point of contact with her future husband. On 12 November, 1836, Louis Napoleon was led to Paris as a prisoner after the futile conspiracy of Strasburg. He was brought to the house of M. Delessert, the prefect, and spent two hours in the large dining-room. In this room, we are told, Eugenie and her sister took lessons in gymnastics nearly every morning with their friends Cecile and Edouard, the children of the prefect. Little did Napoleon think, says Imbert de Saint-Amand, that on the road to out- lawry he had spent some moments in a room entered nearly every day by the child destined to sit with him on the throne of France. M. Filon, who wrote from information supplied by the Empress, says that Napoleon's passion for the Countess of T6ba dated from 1849. Their first meeting probably took place in London in 1847, although, as both had been tossed about the world in a life of change and adventure, there may have been an earlier interview at some continental watering-place. Napoleon, as Prince President, had formed no definite projects of marriage. He had brought with him from London a beautiful woman, Miss Howard, who was devotedly attached to him. M. Odilon Barrot has reproduced in his memoirs a letter written him by the Prince apropos of this lady. It contains the following sentence : "As until now 35 Eugenie's Girlhood my position has prevented me from marrying ; as, amidst the cares of government, I have, alas ! in my own country, from which I have so long been absent, neither intimate friends nor acquaintances of childhood, nor relatives who give me the sweet- ness of family life, I may be pardoned, I hope, an affection which injures nobody, and which I do not seek to parade." Miss Howard disappeared from view before the glories of the rising star, Eugenie, Countess of Teba. Dr. Max Ring quotes the following letter, written by Eugenie to Louis Napoleon before the Revolu- tion of 1848 : — " You wish to go to Paris. You long for the possession of power, to become Consul, President, possibly Dictator. Suppose you attain to the first of these, will that satisfy you ? Will it appease your ambition ? Will you not aspire still higher ? Undoubtedly you will. But how burdensome a wife would be to you ! If, as you wish, you become Emperor, the place for an Empress must be kept vacant. But if you are unfortunate in your plans, if events do not turn out according to your wishes, if France does not offer you what you expect from her, then come back, but only then, and I will give you your answer. Remember that my heart beats strongly enough to make up to you for all sorrow, all disappointed hopes." In the crisis of December, 185 1, the young Countess, who had been nurtured, as we have seen, on the Napoleon legend, wrote to the Prince and offered to place her whole fortune at his disposal. During the magnificent hunting parties given in 36 The Diamond Clover-Leaf the closing months of 1852 at Fontainebleau and Compiegne, the Countess of Montijo and her daugh- ters were Napoleon's guests. Eugenie attracted his admiration by her daring and graceful horse- manship. The prettiest story of the Compiegne visit is told by M. de Maupas. On a bright autumn morning the Emperor, accompanied by a few guests, among whom were Eugenie and her mother, was walking in the park. The youthful Countess called attention to a clover-leaf, so covered with dew-drops that it sparkled like an ornament of diamonds. When the walk was over, the Emperor summoned one of the suite, who immediately set out by his orders for Paris. The next day he brought back a charming trinket, shaped as a trefoil, every leaf bearing a superb diamond dew-drop. Napoleon had ordered that the clover-leaf admired by his future bride should be cleverly imitated in diamonds, and that evening, at a lottery held among the guests, it was arranged that Mademoiselle de Montijo should win the trefoil. Count Horace de Viel Castel, in his journal for 24 December, 1852, mentions that she was sought out and greatly admired at Court. Writing on 10 January, he describes a ball given by the Princess Mathilde, which Eugenie and her mother attended : " The Emperor is still very much taken up with that beautiful young lady, who is very ele- gant, very amiable, clever, and witty. For more than an hour they were talking together, and no one ventured to disturb them." " She and her mother," he says again, " are hoping to bring off a marriage, and all their diplomacy is directed to that end. People pay court to Mademoiselle de Montijo, 37 Eugenie's Girlhood commend themselves to her, ask for her influence on their behalf with the Emperor. The ministers pet her, she goes to all the fetes : she is at this moment the rising sun." Here is a picture of Eugenie's appearance as she rode in the hunting parties at Compiegne : " Her dainty figure was well defined by a closely-buttoned habit j the skirt was long and wide, over grey trousers. With one of her tiny gloved hands she held the reins, while she used the other to urge on her excited Andalusian horse by the help of a little riding-whip, the handle of which was set with pearls. She wore patent-leather boots with high heels and spurs. She sat her horse like a knight, and despised the saddle ordinarily used by ladies. Her long plaits were arranged under a felt hat, from which waved a magnificent long ostrich feather fastened by a diamond clasp. Her sparkling eyes shone like light- ning, and the bewitching smile that played round her rosy lips displayed the whiteness of her teeth." On 17 January, only a day or two before the official announcement, Viel Castel says : " People talk of Mademoiselle de Montijo's chance of becoming Em- press of the French. Why not ? We are living in the age of marvels. Nothing surprises me any longer." On the 18th he hears that rooms at the Tuileries are to be ready by 6 February for the Em- press. " We shall have an Empress, then, by the 6th of February. Will it be Mademoiselle de Montijo ? " Next day he went to a party given by Princess Mathilde, and took a hand at whist with one of the ministers, but found him impenetrable on the mys- tery of the hour. " Many of the women seemed 38 In the Chapel at Compiegne displeased at the idea of calling Mademoiselle de Montij o ' your Majesty.' " Unkindly gossips were already busy. The bride-elect was reported to be the granddaughter of an English merchant, who was a consul in Spain, and who died a bankrupt. The story was told that on Sunday, 19 Decem- ber, when the Emperor and his guests heard Mass in the chapel at Compiegne, the future Empress kept her eyes fixed on the window above the altar. It had been painted by Ziegler, after designs made by Princess Marie, daughter of Louis Philippe, and represents a woman in a violet robe, who holds a book on which may be read the word " Ama " (love). She gives her hand to a young man in a red robe, who holds a cross and looks upward. Countess Bernstorff, writing on 30 January, 1853, to her mother, tells how she had met Mademoiselle de Montij o at St. Cloud and afterwards at a dinner at the Rothschilds'. " She is beautiful, but no longer in her earliest bloom, and has fair hair with darkly pencilled eyelashes and eyebrows." The Austrian diplomat, Baron Hiibner, had told the Countess Bernstorff some time before the engagement was formally announced that the Countess of Teba was likely to share the throne of France. Even after the marked attention shown by Na- poleon to the lovely Spaniard at the Compiegne parties, few believed that he would offer her more than a morganatic marriage, while it was hinted that her fate would not differ from that of other fair and frail beauties who had won his affections in the years of exile. Stories were told of the resolute courage with which Eugenie asserted her position. 39 Eugenie's Girlhood At the close of a review in the court of the Tuileries, the Emperor saw her, with other ladies, watching him from a window of the palace. " Tell me how I can reach you I " he called ; and she replied with gay promptitude — " To the right, sire, by way of the chapel." " Sire, Imperatrice ou rien," was her final word. That queen of matchmakers, the Countess of Montijo, was her daughter's best aid in these difficult days. Viel Castel reports that when Napoleon first spoke of marriage, Eugenie said — " You must write yourself to my mother, who, loving you and me as she does, and well under- standing the distance between us, might be tempted to refuse her consent." " Well played indeed ! " said the watchers of the great game. In the curious memoirs of Madame de la Ferron- nays there are a few notes which reflect the con- temptuous dislike with which supporters of the exiled Princes regarded the beautiful young Spaniard. " Her position, when she came to Paris, was a very doubtful one. The free-and-easy manners which are often to be found among the women of the South, and her want of powerful connections, had made it difficult for her to effect an entrance into good society. She had fallen into the second rank of those foreign women who are feted by the men, but whom great ladies avoid. Though she was invited to the dinners and picnic luncheons which the Vicomte de la Rochefoucauld gave to the foreign women in his charming place, la Vallee-aux-Loups, she was not admitted on the day when the Countess Sosthenes, 40 The Offer of Marriage nee Polignac, did the honours to a more select com- pany. Want of money was acutely felt in the Montij o household, and indeed on the very eve of the official announcement of the marriage, Barene, one of the great dressmakers of the period, had the ill-luck to send in her bill to the future Empress by a sheriff's officer." Madame de la Ferronnays adds that Eugenie never loved the Emperor, and that her heart remained faithful to her early love, the Marquis d'Alcanizes, who afterwards, as Duke of Sesto, married the widow of M. de Morny. The story, heard from one of the Empress's friends, that on the eve of her marriage she said, " If Alcanizes came to fetch me even to-day, I would fly with him," is an obvious invention. The crisis in the Imperial love-story came on New Year's Eve, 1852, when, at a party in the Tuileries, the wife of an officer of high rank spoke insultingly to Mademoiselle de Montij o. Eugenie, who with her partner had given offence by stepping acci- dentally in front of this lady, had no sooner heard the rude words than she hastened to the Emperor, and told him she must retire from a Court in which she was liable to insolent attacks. " I will avenge you," cried the Emperor, and the next day he sent to the Countess of Montij o an official request for her daughter's hand in marriage. His relatives were violently opposed to the choice, as they, like the leading French statesmen, wished a dynastic alliance. Princess Mathilde threw her- self at her cousin's feet and vainly implored him to renounce his dangerous passion. Prince Jerome Napoleon, her brother, was the 41 Eugenie's Girlhood bridegroom destined by the old ex-King of West- phalia for Mademoiselle de Montijo. Her fortune, as well as her beauty, was an attraction to father and son. Long years afterwards, Prince Napoleon told M. Lengle of his father's intention, adding that he was not disinclined to the alliance, but that his cousin, then Prince President, had interfered. This early lover was to prove in after years Eugenie's most remorseless enemy. The Emperor was not so intoxicated by his love as to abandon all thoughts of prudence. He warned Eugenie of the perils of the position he offered her. " It is only fair," he said, " that I should set be- fore you the whole truth." He spoke of his unpopularity with the higher classes, the malevolence of the Great Powers, the possibility of assassination. At the moment he was the idol of the people, but their favour might quickly change, and if disaffection began, it might spread to the army. Should the soldiers waver in their allegiance, the ruler who had said, " The Empire is peace," might be compelled to make war in self- defence. Eugenie, we may be sure, answered with high-hearted and generous words. These ghosts that haunted the paths of the future had no terrors if she might meet them by her husband's side. Ancient legend told that when death or disaster threatened a member of the lordly house of Kirk- patrick, a white swan was seen upon the lake at Closeburn. We may pardon a daughter of the Kirkpatricks if at this moment she saw the lake of life lying blue and unruffled in the sunshine, without even the shadow of a white swan upon its bosom. 42 CHAPTER III THE IMPERIAL MARRIAGE The Imperial engagement made public — English comments — The Emperor's speech — Popularity of the marriage — The civil wedding — The ceremony at Notre Dame. THE secret of Napoleon's engagement was amazingly well kept. On Wednesday, 12 January, 1853, a grand ball was given at the Tuil- eries. Invitations had been sent to three thousand guests, including all the principal members of the English colony. The Emperor, wearing a general's uniform, with white breeches and white silk stock- ings, opened the ball with Lady Cowley, wife of the English Ambassador. The Times correspondent noted that he danced also with his cousin, Princess Mathilde, and with the Countess of Teba, " the latter one of the most beautiful women in Spain." He then sat down, with the Grand Chamberlain seated or standing behind him, and looked on at others dancing, or walked about with a lady leaning on his arm. Lord Cowley was much in Napoleon's com- pany during the evening, but no hint of the forth- coming event found its way into the London papers. On 13 January the Daily News published the following statement from its well-informed Paris correspondent : — " It is rumoured that the projected match be- 43 The Imperial Marriage tween Napoleon and a princess of Hohenzollern is broken off. I hear that this match is still on the tapis, the Court of the Tuileries professing the greatest indifference to Prussian interference in this matter, and a determination to carry the thing through against all opposition." Imbert de Saint-Amand, courtliest of authors, says that people did not begin talking of the Em- peror's marriage until after the Tuileries ball. On 1 6 January the Marchioness de Contades wrote to her father, the Marshal de Castellane, " You must hear, even so far away, the echo of the rumours of Paris, where nothing is talked of but the marriage of the Emperor and Mademoiselle de Montijo. Well, between ourselves, that might happen. The Emperor has conceived a very violent passion for her, and he seems to me to take the thing quite in earnest. As for her, she conducts herself with re- serve and dignity. From the political point of view this marriage seems at the first glance to have in- conveniences ; but if it does not take place, it is more than probable that the Emperor will not marry at all, seeing that his repugnance to marriage up till now has been but too well proven, and that certain old English chains, which are still very near, and which are the terror of those who love him, may restrain him." Of the Countess of Teba this lady added, " The young girl is pretty, good, and witty, and along with this I believe she has much energy and nobility of soul. I have been watching her a good deal of late, and I have observed nothing but what is good." The Countess of Hatzfeldt, the other daughter 44 Disappointed Relatives of Marshal de Castellane, whose husband was at that time Prussian minister in Paris, wrote to her father : " They are talking in the city of the Emperor's marriage with Mademoiselle de Montijo ; this news is not confirmed. If it is true, he will at least have a beautiful wife ; that is something for him. It means preferment by choice." Paris correspondents were more occupied that week with a Bourse crisis than with the Emperor's wedding. Even in the circle of his nearest relatives the first whispers of the truth were received with incredulity. Baron du Casse, an aide-de-camp of old King Jerome, says that when he brought the report on the evening of 21 January he was greeted with a shout of derision. " What nonsense ! Don't tell me stuff of that sort ; I forbid it." ' But your Highness asked what people are saying in my club. If you are angry when I repeat their gossip, I will never tell you anything more." " No, no," said the ex-King ; " but you must not spread ridiculous rumours." Next morning Baron du Casse was summoned to his master's bedroom. " Well," said Jerome, "it is true after all. Louis is to marry Mademoiselle de Montijo. Order my state carriage for eleven. We must be at the Tuil- eries by noon." The ministers of the Crown had been informed privately of the Emperor's intention early in Janu- ary, but he and they doubtless saw the expediency of keeping the news from the aged Jerome, whose 45 The Imperial Marriage son, Prince Napoleon, might expect to succeed to the throne if the Emperor left no child. In the Moniteur for 19 January it was announced that the leading councillors of state would meet on Saturday, 22 January, at the Tuileries to re- ceive a communication from the Emperor in relation to his marriage. The engagement was announced by the English papers on Friday, 21 January, almost every leader- writer expressing astonishment at the Emperor's choice. The Times remarked that nothing so sur- prising had occurred since Madame de Sevigne ex- hausted the language of amazement in telling of La Grande Mademoiselle's engagement to M. de Lauzun. The bride's name was given as Donna Eugenia Montijos. The Times leader-writer con- tinued : — " After an intimacy with the Emperor of some months' duration, during which the young Countess of Teba had attracted a considerable amount of attention, a sense of what was due to her own repu- tation appears to have led the lady and her mother to announce their intended return to Madrid, since it was only as the consort of the Emperor that she was prepared to accept his homage. This blow had its effect, and the imperial Pamela obtains her re- ward ; in spite of some passages which were thought to indicate a different conclusion, but which have left no unfavourable trace on the fame of the future Empress." Apropos of this passage it should be noted that the Countess of Montijo had sought advice from her cousin, M. de Lesseps, about the course she ought 46 The News in England to follow when her daughter was receiving Na- poleon's compromising attentions. Lesseps replied in one word, " Go." The Times and the other English papers wrote sympathetically of Napoleon's choice. It was pointed out that Louis XIV, the greatest King who ever reigned at Versailles, had married the widow Scarron (Madame de Maintenon) and lived with her as his clandestine queen. France, it was said, is a new world ; why should not its monarch in- augurate new social customs ? Punch appeared with a fresh version of the "Spanish Ladye's Love" : — " Gentle ladye, show some pitie ; I'm an Emperor — no lesse," But the ladye was too wittie To be caught with chaff, I guesse. " There's one way from my chains yourself to free, My gallant Emperor — that is, to marry me." • • • • • " On French thrones are many changes, Quickly fall who quickly rise — Then the way you've been behaving, Prisoning, shooting, telling lies." " A better man henceforth I mean to be, And all the credit of the change they will set down to thee." Napoleon had lived so recently in somewhat sordid exile in London that our newspapers had scarcely yet learned to treat him respectfully. Lord Palmer- ston, with whom the French ruler was a favourite, wrote to his brother : — " Napoleon's marriage seems to me a most sensible one. He had no chance of a political alliance of any value, or of sufficient importance to counterbalance the annoyance of an ugly or epileptic 47 The Imperial Marriage wife whom he had never seen till she was presented to him as a bride, and he was quite right to take a wife whom he knew and liked. I admire the frank- ness with which he declares himself a parvenu, and the mention of that truth, however it may shock the prejudices of Vienna and Petersburg, will endear him to the bulk of the French nation." Events moved swiftly after the first announce- ment. On Saturday, 22 January, the Emperor summoned the Senate and the Legislative Chamber, with the Council of State, to meet him in the Throne Room of the Tuileries. There he delivered a re- markable and original address, spoken, as a memoir- writer tells us, with a strong German accent. He began by expressing doubts as to the value of royal alliances, which often substituted family interests for those of the nation. Among royal marriages, one only secured his approval, that of Napoleon I with Marie Louise. In the face of Europe he frankly accepted the position of a parvenu monarch. The lady whom I have chosen," he continued, is of lofty birth. French by education, by the memory of the blood shed by her father in the cause of the Empire, she enjoys as a Spaniard the advantage of having no family in France to whom honours and dignities must be given. Endowed with the best qualities of heart and mind, she will be the ornament of the throne, and in the day of peril one of its cour- ageous defenders. A devout Catholic, she will join her prayers to mine for the welfare of France ; gracious and good, she will, I firmly hope, revive in the same position the virtues of the Empress Jose- phine. ... I come, then, gentlemen, to say this to 48 11 it " Vive Plmperatrice ! " France : I have preferred a wife whom I love and respect to an unknown consort through whom I might have won advantages mingled with sacrifice. Soon I shall go to Notre Dame, and there present the Empress to the people and the army ; the con- fidence they have in me will secure their sympathy for her whom I have chosen ; and you, sirs, when you learn to know her, will be convinced that I have once more been inspired by Providence." The speech was eagerly discussed in Paris. Peo- ple remarked, not unnaturally, that the contempt for royal alliances was like the fox's scorn of the grapes, but the general impression was favourable. There was hardly a better ceremonial orator in Europe than Napoleon ; no monarch of his time possessed the same gift of lofty, eloquent, pathetic, and tactful speech. The dreamer translated his reveries into golden words. His depreciation of ancient lineage did not discourage the papers from minute heraldic researches into the titles of Made- moiselle de Montij o. It was discovered that she was three times a grandee of Spain, by the names of Teba, Banos, and Mora, and that through her mother she was descended from one of the most illustrious Scottish houses. King Jerome and his son, who had stood on the Emperor's right and left in the Throne Room, went from the Tuileries to No. 12, Place Vendome, and called oh the bride-elect and her mother. It had been noted that some of the statesmen who most strongly opposed the marriage were loudest in shout- ing " Vive lTmperatrice," and the Emperor's uncle and cousin had at least the grace to accept in silence K 49 The Imperial Marriage the accomplished fact. Baron du Casse, who ac- companied the princes on this visit, says they found the future Empress seated on a high stool in the middle of the drawing-room, dressed rather care- lessly in a morning gown. " Her sunny, fair hair seemed to me very beautiful, and her teeth were almost too good. . . . Nothing could be finer than her figure and her shoulders." M. Thiers, who thought Napoleon the most medi- ocre of men, sneeringly observed that the Emperor had secured himself against the chances of the future, for if he lost his throne he would at least be a grandee of Spain ! The bride-elect behaved in these difficult days with a dignified modesty which won all hearts. The Foreign Minister, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who had wished for a dynastic alliance, handed in his resig- nation, which the Emperor refused to accept. " Go and see the Countess of Teba," said Napoleon. Eugenie received the statesman with graceful cour- tesy. " I thank you," she said, " for the advice you gave the Emperor about his marriage." " Then His Majesty has betrayed me ? " cried the minister in confusion. " Not at all, monsieur ; but I know the counsel you gave, which expressed my own feel- ing. Like you, I wished the Emperor to consider first the interests of his throne." A gossip-monger carried the news of the engage- ment to Lamartine, thinking that he would disap- prove. Instead, the poet exclaimed, " The Emperor has realized the most beautiful dream possible to man ; to raise the woman he loves above all other women." 5° The Bride's Generosity Immediately after the announcement that the wedding would take place at Notre Dame on 30 January, Madame de Monti jo and her daughter left the Place Vendome and took up their residence in the Elysee Palace. The elder Countess wrote to a friend on the subject of her daughter's engagement : " I do not know whether I should be happy or whether I should weep. How many mothers envy me who could not understand the tears with which my eyes are rilled ! Eugenie is to be queen over your France, and in spite of myself I remember that with you queens have but little happiness. In spite of myself the thought of Marie Antoinette takes possession of me, and I wonder if my child may not have the same fate." Mother and daughter lived very quietly through the week before the wedding. Once or twice, when shopping in the Rue Vivienne, Eugenie was cheered by the crowd. The papers told new stories each morning of her romantic generosity. She had been seen flinging purses to beggars and wrapping up poor children in satin cloaks ! If an accident hap- pened in any part of the town, forthwith a tale would be invented that the Countess of Teba was passing at the moment, and that she hastened to succour the distressed household. One act of noble generosity won the hearts of the people more than all these legends. The city of Paris had voted 600,000 francs for a set of diamonds as a wedding gift. Eugenie, in a simple and touching letter to the Prefect, asked that the money might be devoted to a charitable purpose. " I feel deeply," she wrote, " the generous de- 51 The Imperial Marriage cision come to by the Municipal Council of Paris, which thus manifests its sympathetic adhesion to the union which the Emperor contracts. I never- theless experience a painful feeling at thinking that the first public act attached to my name at the mo- ment of my marriage should be a considerable ex- pense to the city of Paris. Permit me therefore not to accept your gift, however flattering it may be for me ; you will give me greater happiness by employing in charities the sum you had fixed on for the purchase of the ornaments which the Muni- cipal Council wished to present to me. My desire is that my marriage shall not be the occasion of any fresh charge for the country to which I henceforth belong ; and the only thing to which I aspire is to share with the Emperor the love and esteem of the French people." The city used the 600,000 francs to found and en- dow a school for the education of young girls of the poorer classes. It was agreed that, in honour of the Empress, the house should bear her name. Baron Haussmann, who was at the time Prefect of the Gironde, says that the bride's generous con- duct in refusing the diamonds was so much admired by the people of Bordeaux that they voted 50,000 francs to establish a charitable institution for them- selves, and placed it under her patronage. The Empress was well known and much admired in the south. She had frequently visited Bayonne and Biarritz with her mother, and Baron Haussmann remembered her at the Prefect's ball in Bordeaux. M. de Maupas tells us that the marriage was highly popular with the masses, and we can readily be- lieve it. A glow of mediaeval chivalry surrounded 52 A Queen of Beauty the event. The crowd at a tournament was ever ready to acclaim the Queen of Love and Beauty. Napoleon, like Ivanhoe at Ashby, had sunk the point of his lance, with the coronet which it supported, at the feet of the fairest girl. A beauty-loving people rejoiced in the triumph of beauty. And on that point, at least, there was no dispute. The Empress Eugenie, at the age of twenty-seven, was the loveliest woman of her time. She was of middle height, slightly and gracefully built, in complexion a blonde ardente. The dark blue eyes were shaded by long lashes, the golden hair lay in soft curls on the low white forehead. Well-marked eyebrows and drooping lids gave character to a faultless face. The nose was slightly arched, the cheeks and chin were firmly yet delicately moulded, the curved lips expressed refinement, gentleness, and sympathy. It seemed as if old Scotland and old Spain had mingled love-potions to produce this perfect flower. Her shoulders, arms, and neck were the delight of artists ; feet and hands were small and queenly. The daughters of Andalusia are often browned and dimmed before the age of thirty ; she came of a stock in which beauty lasted long. The Empress has been compared to Mary, Queen of Scots, but the author of that suggestion was certainly no flatterer. There is a purity, a tenderness, a capacity for emotion in her gentle face which we seek vainly in her six- teenth-century rival. She was worthy of those sweetest love-lines in early French poetry — ad- dressed by King Henry II to Diane de Poitiers : — Plus ferme foy ne fut onques juree A nouveau prince (6 ma seule princesse) Que mon amour, quy vous sera sans cesse Contre le terns et la mort asseuree. 53 The Imperial Marriage De fosse creuse, ou de tour bien muree N'a point besoin de ma foy la fortresse, Dont je vous fy dame, roine et maystresse, Pour ce qu'elle est d'eternelle duree Even Bismarck confessed to Jules Favre that he had never in his life been so dazzled by feminine loveliness as when the Empress Eugenie received his master, the King of Prussia, in the grand vestibule of Compiegne Palace. The depth and sincerity of Napoleon's affection for his wife may be understood from the anony- mous article he contributed fifteen years later, on the eve of her birthday, to Le Dix D^cembre (15 December, 1868). The manuscript was found in his autograph in the Tuileries after the fall of the Empire. He is the authority for the story that she had proposed, in girlish enthusiasm, to carry con- solation to the captive of Ham, and that her romantic mother was not disinclined to favour the idea. The Emperor goes on : " This sorely tried Prince she was to see some years later, not in the confinement of a dungeon, but raised by national acclamation to the head of a great State. She was to exercise on him the attraction of her beauty, of her intellect, and of the supreme nobility of her sentiments. She was to become a part of his existence and to share his destiny." The Imperial journalist tells his readers that as a girl Eugenie was an earnest student of the works of Fourier, and was known to her companions as La Phalansterienne. The word refers to the Phalan- stery in which the social philosopher wished to house his " Phalanx " of three hundred families, 54 Eugenie as Student drawn partly from the rich and partly from the poorer classes. Napoleon remarks on his wife's ardent interest in charitable institutions and in the life and labour of the people, and here, without doubt, these two were one. The Emperor, says M. de la Gorce, was sometimes dreamy when states- men talked politics in his presence, but his attention was instantly awake if they spoke of some house of mercy which needed support, or, above all, of some private individual in misfortune. " His kind heart was moved — too quickly, perhaps, for he gave with- out reckoning, without examination, without con- trol." In the article in Le Dix Decembre the Emperor is almost amusingly anxious to prove that his lovely consort concerned herself with serious subjects. " We may say that there is no economical or finan- cial question of which she is ignorant. It is charm- ing to hear her discuss these difficult problems with men of authority. Literature, history, and art are also frequently the subject of her conversations. . . . Her language, sometimes incorrect, is full of pictur- esqueness and life. . . . Pious without being bigoted, well informed but not pedantic, she talks on all subjects with perfect unrestraint." We have here almost the picture of an Imperial Mrs. Wititterly, and her husband adds (it is his one criticism) : " Perhaps she is too fond of discussion. Very sprightly in her nature, she often lets herself be carried away by her feelings, which have more than once excited enmities, but her exaggerations have always as their foundation the love of good." In a charming final passage the Emperor speaks of 55 The Imperial Marriage Eugenie's tender solicitude for their son. She de- sired that the Prince Imperial should receive a manly education, and herself watched daily over his progress. " She helped day by day in that in- tellectual growth which in one who inherits so high a fortune is the pledge of the most brilliant future." Three years after these words were written the high fortune was dissipated, the sun of that future had gone down at noon. In addition to the bride's rare gifts of person and intellect, the French people recognized with approval her genuine if somewhat narrow piety. Here, again, she was in fullest sympathy with her husband. Not- withstanding many lapses of conduct, Napoleon was a sincere believer. He threw his influence on the side of the Church, addressed the higher clergy with almost exaggerated deference, pleased the priests by a regulation for the stricter observance of Sunday, and on great occasions used the language of humble and fervent faith. To the Bishop of Bayonne, who congratulated him on his birthday, he made this reply : " It is customary, monseigneur, for the whole nation to celebrate the sovereign's fete on a pre- scribed day. It is the duty of the sovereign on his side to think well whether he has done all that in him lies to deserve those many- voiced honours and prayers. It is his duty, above all, at the foot of the altar, to ask Heaven, through the intercession of its conse- crated ministers, to bless his efforts, to enlighten his conscience, to give him perpetually the power to do good and to resist evil. I thank you, monseigneur, for the prayers that you offer to Heaven for me. Ask also, if you please, the Divine protection for our 56 The Pope and the Empire armies, for in praying for those who fight and for those who suffer you are also praying for me." At the time when his marriage was announced, Napoleon had set his heart on winning, like his uncle, the highest honour from the Pope. As Pius VII had come to Paris to crown Napoleon I, he hoped to induce Pius IX to undertake the same journey for his sake. A curious account of the negotiations is given by M. de la Gorce. They were conducted at Rome by Mgr. de Bonnechose, at that time Bishop of Nancy, and by a young priest of high birth and saintly character, M. de Segur, one of the chief ornaments of the French Church under the Second Empire. A formal letter of invitation to the Pope was addressed under cover to M. de Segur. After reading it, Pius cried, " Here's a splendid letter " — "Ecco una tnagnifica letter a " — and at once proceeded to inquire what price Napoleon would pay for a coronation in Paris. Would he abolish those " Organic Articles " which were so hateful to the Papacy ? " Every one of these articles," said the Pope, " is a slap in the face for me." There were serious difficulties in the way. By crowning Napoleon he must offend Austria, which had just concluded a Concordat favourable to the Church. The clever young abbe suggested that after crown- ing the French Emperor, Pius might proceed to Vienna and crown Francis Joseph. " Well, then, we shall go," replied the Pope. " Only if the Emperor wishes me to come to France, he must open the door. Let him abolish every regulation, every decree, which is contrary to the Concordat. I will allow three months to pass so 57 The Imperial Marriage that may there be no appearance of a bargain. And then let the carriage be ready — E poi in carrozza ! " Difficulties arose in Paris and Rome. The Pope feared Austria, the Emperor could draw no con- cessions from his ministers, and the lapse of time, with the victories of the Crimean War, convinced him that his throne was secure without the Pope's intervention. The early blindness which fell upon M. de Segur removed from the Vatican his ablest advocate. So it happened that the most glorious religious ceremony of Napoleon's life was not a coro- nation, but the marriage at Notre Dame. His enormous popularity, apart from all other considerations, disposed the people to accept his bride. The Bonapartes, like the Guises of old, came as princes from fairyland. From age to age, the French have thrown themselves at the feet of such astonishing magicians. Michelet's remark, in his chapters on the Dukes Francis and Henry of Guise, that a hero was a first necessity for the populace of Paris, corresponds exactly with a French bishop's admission about the early days of the Empire. " In 1852 France wanted a Charlemagne so intensely that she may be pardoned for her determination to find, even by self-deception, a Charlemagne in Napoleon III." On Saturday, 29 January, 1853, a week after the speech in the Throne Room, Court carriages went to the Elysee to bring the bride to the Tuileries for the civil wedding. On the 27th, as announced in the Moniteur, Napoleon and Eugenie had re- ceived Holy Communion in the chapel of the palace. It was past eight o'clock on a clear winter evening 58 The Civil Wedding when the acclamations of the people announced the arrival of the bride. Officials received her at the foot of the staircase, and at the entrance to the first salon she was welcomed by Prince Napoleon and Princess Mathilde, who led her to the drawing- room, in which the Emperor waited. Eugenie wore a white silk robe, covered with costly Alencon lace, and a diamond and sapphire belt which had belonged to the Empress Marie Louise. Napoleon's orna- ments were the collar of the Legion of Honour worn by his uncle the Emperor, and the collar of the Golden Fleece which belonged to Charles V. The knot was tied by M. Fould, Minister of State, in the Hall of the Marshals. The register used was that of Napoleon I, the last event noted in it being the birth of the King of Rome. The questions and responses were as follows : — " Sire, does your Majesty declare that he takes in marriage her Excellency Mademoiselle Eugenie de Montijo, Comtesse de Teba, here present ? " " I declare that I take in marriage Her Excellency Mademoiselle Eugenie de Montijo, Comtesse de Teba, here present.'' " Mademoiselle Eugenie de Montijo, Comtesse de Teba, does your Excellency declare that she takes in marriage His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon III, here present ? " " I declare that I take in marriage His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon, here present." The Minister of State pronounced the marriage in these words : " In the name of the Emperor, of the Constitution, and of the Law, I declare that His Majesty Napoleon III, Emperor of the French by 59 The Imperial Marriage the grace of God and the national will, and Her Ex- cellency Mademoiselle Eugenie de Montijo, Countess of Teba, are united in marriage.' ' After the signing of the register, the company ad- journed to the theatre of the palace, where they heard a cantata, written by Mery and composed by Auber. At eleven Napoleon retired to his rooms, and the bride, with her mother, returned to the Elysee, to rest in preparation for the trying events of the morrow. Even in that hour of intoxicating triumph the young Empress did not forget the poor. Her husband placed in her corbeille de manage a pocket-book containing 250,000 francs. This sum she divided between the Maternity Societies of Paris and the Hospital for Incurables. For eight days, under the direction of M. Viollet- le-Duc, workmen had been toiling without pause to prepare the Cathedral for the grand event. Gal- leries for spectators were erected near the chancel, as in Westminster Abbey on supreme occasions, and the rush for tickets taxed the utmost resources of the officials. The high altar was removed to the entrance of the choir, and under a vast canopy of crimson velvet, surmounted by an eagle bearing a crown, thrones were placed for the Imperial spouses. The pillars of choir and nave were wreathed with green velvet draperies, strewn with golden bees, and ornamented with the royal arms. It was observed that the arms of the Montijos had twenty-five quarterings, and that the device was a cross, with Constantine's motto, In hoc signo vinces. Flags embroidered with the arms of the French depart- ments hung in the nave. A choir of five hundred 60 In Notre Dame voices was to be stationed in a gallery at the west end of the church. Outside, the alterations were hardly less striking. In front of the great door a porch had been erected, its pillars sustaining statues of Charlemagne and Napoleon I. The towers were surmounted by eagles and banners. January 30th was one of those calm days, with mild air and streaming sunshine, which France often enjoys even in the depth of winter. Soon after day- light an immense crowd thronged the streets. Depu- tations of workmen, and young girls robed in white, carried early congratulations to the Tuileries. Be- fore noon carriages were rolling to the Cathedral doors, bringing ambassadors, marshals, ministers, officials from every service. Soldiers lined both sides of the river, keeping back the crowds. At half-past eleven royal coaches brought the bride from the Elysee. Many writers have described her dazzling love- liness on her wedding day. " No words," says M. d'Herisson, " can adequately describe the charm, the beauty, the grace of the new sove- reign. Nothing that has been written or will be written about her can possibly be exaggerated. I was literally fascinated." Imbert de Saint-Amand writes : " Mingled with the crowd in the court of the Louvre I saw the procession pass. Seen through the windows of the glittering carriage, the Empress appeared an ideal being. Her pallor enhanced the beauty of her sculpturesque profile. I shall never forget the impression produced on me by this sweet and radiant image. A name- less presentiment told me that, like all incom- 61 The Imperial Marriage parably beautiful women . . . she was destined to calamities as exceptional as her fortune and beauty." In the carriage with the bride sat the Countess of Montijo and Count Charles Tascher de la Pagerie, her first chamberlain. Napoleon received her at the Tuileries. For the journey to Notre Dame their Majesties used the gilded glass coach which on 2 December, 1804, had carried Napoleon and Josephine to Notre Dame for their coronation. General Fleury says that the crown which surmounted the carriage fell to the ground as the procession passed under the palace arch, and an old servant remembered that the same thing had happened at the wedding of Napoleon and Marie Louise. "At the moment when the carriage which conveyed their Majesties left the arch of the Tuileries," writes Fleury, " the Imperial crown which surmounted it became detached and fell to the ground. It was necessary to replace it as quickly as possible and to suspend the march. This could not be done without creating a certain sensation. An old servitor of the First Empire pointed out that the same thing had occurred under precisely the same conditions at the marriage of Napoleon I and Marie Louise. It was the same carriage, surmounted by the same Im- perial crown, and it was the same accident. Na- poleon III inquired the reason of this delay. When I explained it to him, his impassive face betrayed, as usual, no emotion. But in any other circum- stances, he, who knew the history of the Empire as if he had been part of it, would not have failed to tell me what had happened at the time of the marriage of Napoleon I." 62 The Great Ceremony The bride's dress was of white velvet, and her long lace veil was fastened with a wreath of orange blossoms. The famous belt of diamonds encircled her slender waist, and on her brow was the coro- net of diamonds worn by Marie Louise on her wedding day. It was almost one o'clock when the Archbishop of Paris, the ill-fated Mgr. Sibour, began the mar- riage service. No more magnificent ceremony had been seen within living memory. Overwhelming, indeed, for the bride must have been the entrance into that solemn nave which had witnessed some of the most thrilling scenes in French history. Though it is neither the crowning nor the burial-place of monarchs, their shadows haunt its mysterious twi- light. All these, O King, from their seclusion dread And guarded palace of eternity, Mix in thy pageant with phantasmal tread, Hear the long waves of acclamation roll, And with yet mightier silence marshal thee To the awful throne thou hast inherited. Such thoughts, we may be sure, crossed the minds even of the " usurpers," as the congregation rose with one consent to welcome them, and the Arch- bishop, crucifix in hand, advanced to meet them on the threshold. The service was long and fatiguing, and the Empress became so visibly agitated that Count Tascher de la Pagerie, who stood behind her, thought she must faint, and heard the Emperor cheering her with tender words. She rallied for the Te Deum which followed the Mass, but it was noted 63 The Imperial Marriage that her marvellous beauty was paled that day as if with the apprehension of sorrow. At the close of the Te Deum the Archbishop of Paris, and the Cure of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, the parish church of the Tuileries, presented the register to the married pair for their signatures. The witnesses for the Emperor were his uncle, King Jerome, and his cousin, Prince Napoleon, and for the Empress, the Marquis de Valdegamas, Spanish Ambassador in Paris, the Due d'Ossuna, and other Spanish noblemen. After the signing of the register the Archbishop and his clergy conducted the newly married pair to the western entrance. Their reception was genuinely enthusiastic in the neighbourhood of Notre Dame, elsewhere it was cordial. The crowd was so ab- sorbed in watching the procession, so enraptured with the beauty of the Empress, that they almost forgot to cheer. Telegrams announcing the mar- riage were despatched to the principal towns. " Everywhere on her passage," it was said, " the young and beautiful Empress has received from the people, from the National Guard, and from the Army, the most touching and enthusiastic greeting." On returning to the Tuileries, the Emperor and Empress showed themselves twice on the balconies. Their brief honeymoon was spent at Saint Cloud. Among the visitors to Paris for these festivities there were numerous compatriots of the Empress. Prosper Merimee remarks that among the beauties of Spain the triumph of the Countess of Teba aroused envy and desire. " Papa," said one dark-eyed Andalusian maiden, " let them take me to Paris. 6 4 Pearls and Tears There is no chance for a girl in this country." It was a Spanish lady who, as she admired the pearl necklace worn by the youthful sovereign, quoted with melancholy foreboding that proverb of her country : " The pearls which women wear on their wedding day are a symbol of the tears which they will shed." ' 65 CHAPTER IV THE YOUNG WIFE Eugenie's bridal triumph — The Crimean War — Queen Victoria and the Empress in 1855 — The Empress at Windsor — Queen Victoria's return visit to Paris — The cradle at the Tuileries — The christening at Notre Dame — The Golden Rose. " /"AH, I do love her! " Napoleon had said to V_y Fleury on the terrace of Compiegne, and the gallant soldier replied, " Well then, you must marry her, sir ! " " I am seriously thinking about it," was his master's response. Fleury' s advice had been taken ; Eugenie de Monti jo sat on the throne of France. Her magnificent trousseau, the work of Madame Vignon and Mademoiselle Palmyre, was a nine- days' wonder for the Parisians. Medals, sold by thousands at a penny, bore on one side the effigy of the Emperor, with the inscription, " Heureux mariage de S.M. Napoleon III," and on the other that of Eugenie, with the words, " Imperatrice des Francais, 30 Janvier, 1853." The verses addressed by Spanish poets to Anda- lusia's fairest daughter were translated into French, and published in a handsome volume as the " Ro- mancero " of the Empress. We turn over the pages to-day with swiftly changing thoughts. Enrique de Cisneros celebrated her feats as a horsewoman. 66 Honeymoon " She controls the steed rather by her beauty than by the strength of her arm, and you might take her in the depth of the forest for Diana the Huntress." Other minstrels hailed her as the Pearl of Spain, the Nymph of the Xenil, the Angel of France, and the Imperial Star. Mingled with graceful flatteries there are ominous, unexpected sayings. " My chil- dren, the trembling flame has nearly gone out ; this is the hour when night-birds leave their nests, when we hear sad voices moaning." Strangely enough, the Empress's first act after her marriage showed that her mind was brooding on images of death and sorrow. At the beginning of her honeymoon at Saint Cloud, she asked Napoleon to drive her to Versailles, and there she inspected with mournful interest the rooms of Marie Antoinette in the Little Trianon. On returning to Paris, the Imperial pair visited the Archives Nationales, and read Marie Antoinette's last letter, written from the Conciergerie on the morning of her execution. Eugenie in later years made a collection of relics belonging to the hapless queen. Dark thoughts could not, however, find, a per- manent lodgment in the young bride's heart. The first months after the wedding were filled with laughter and festival. On Wednesday, 9 February, the Senate gave a ball to their Majesties at the Luxembourg. The Empress appeared in a rich dress of white satin ornamented with pearls, wear- ing a wreath of violets in her hair. The pallor which awakened sympathy at the Notre Dame ceremony had given place to the bright, clear colour of perfect health. The Legislative Body, not to be outdone, 67 The Young Wife sent out invitations for a ball at the Palais Bourbon. Montalembert was one of several members who grudged the expenditure. He forwarded his sub- scription to the Mayor of Besancon, asking that it might be employed in charity. The mayor, an official who had understanding of the times, promptly returned the money. The Imperial Court was organized with un- bounded pomp and luxury. As Francis I had wished to revive the customs of mediaeval chivalry, the young Court of the Empire sought to imitate the old monarchy. The offices of Grand Marshal of the Palace, Grand Chamberlain, Master of the Horse, and Master of the Hounds, were re-established, along with countless minor dignities. Some of the gentlemen round the Emperor drew salaries in several different capacities. The nation was willing, for the moment, to accept such burdens, and watched indulgently while the rulers of yester- day sheltered themselves behind the stiff etiquette of feudal centuries. Napoleon was a martinet on the petty points of palace manners. The least departure from the established routine annoyed him more than a serious error. A book was published early in 1853 on How to Choose Liveries, and when one influential personage powdered his coachman, all society hastened to imitate him. De Tocque- ville wrote to one of his English friends that the courtiers in the forest of Fontainebleau were wear- ing the hunting-dress of Louis XV's time, " avec the cocket hate a plume." A striking picture of the young Empress is given by George Sand in her Impressions et Souvenirs : 68 George Sand on the Empress " That young Empress, let us speak of her, for already she is playing a great part. She arrived amongst us wearing Spanish fashions, with a taste for strong emotions, with a lingering regret for bull- fights, we won't say for the auto-da-fe. Her piety was never hidden. She knew the game of the fan, and was passionately fond of dress. Her hair was powdered with gold, her figure was rounded, she had all possible attractions, even that of kindliness, for she is kind and charitable and gracious. She is everything that strikes the imagination, the senses, the heart, too, when need arises. All the men are in love with her, and those who cannot aspire to the favour of the least of her glances try to turn their wives into Empresses of the counting- house. These good women try to copy the beauti- ful Eugenie. They pour gold or copper sand upon their red or false hair. They powder. They, too, at this moment have pretty figures and small feet." General Du Barail, who dined at Saint Cloud not long after the Imperial marriage, remarks that the Empress was then in all the splendour of her dazzling beauty, and that the Emperor did not even try to hide in public the passionate affection he felt for her. u The talk could not be very interesting. The Emperor and Empress asked questions and the others replied." Du Barail tells that a favourite game of the moment at Court was to kick balls against the candles and gaslights until all were put out ! The Empress was particularly skilful in this dangerous sport. As on the eve of Waterloo, the whisper of war broke in upon the dance. The red star hung above 6 9 The Young Wife the Imperial pair almost from their wedding night. At the opening of Parliament in 1853, Napoleon had given earnest assurances of peace, but at that very moment the troubles which led to the Crimean War had broken out between Russia and Turkey. The war, when it came, was glorious and uplifting for the Empire. France, the protector of the Holy Places, whose white flag had been for centuries the pledge of safety to the oppressed Christians of the East — France, whose armour conscience buckled on, Whom zeal and charity brought to the field As God's own soldier — * was raised by her gallant fleets and armies to the first rank among European Powers. The ancient motto, it seemed, had found a modern illustration, — " Gesta Dei per Francos." The story of the Crimean War does not belong to these pages, but I may recall that picture drawn by Henri Perreyve of his visit to the wounded at Marseilles. It was strange, he says, to hear tales of battle and glory in the mouths of poor young men who had been lying for three months or more on a bed of pain — men weakened by fever, whose wounds had festered during the long and painful voyage, and who, after all their sufferings, had no prospect save of a useless and impotent career. " In these immense halls, full of young men like ourselves, mutilated or dying, I remembered my murmurings against my trials, and blushed to think of them. I wish you could have seen that really holy look with which some of them said to me, ' I * King John. 70 The Crimean War did my duty, Monsieur le Cure : God's will be done.' That word duty is in almost every mouth. I was greatly impressed by this, and it stirred in me an immense hope for France." Perreyve went to see the soldiers embarking at the quays. He was one who could look below the surface gaiety with which French people, as he says, often conceal serious and profoundly Christian thoughts. One young recruit observed to him, "Am I not lucky to get this fine voyage for nothing ? " " Five minutes later that man said to me, very earnestly. ' Each must do his duty, Monsieur l'Abbe.' Everywhere I heard that stern and sacred word." The best Frenchmen recognized the unselfish and chivalrous aspect of the Crimean War. Writing to Madame Swetchine on 9 February, 1854, La- cordaire says : " France and England have thrown down the gauntlet at last, in the name of civilization, liberty, and religion, to that power which for half a century has been weighing upon the world like a menace of barbarism, schism, and servitude. . . . What a marvel it is to see a dictator forced to join with England in defending the free civilization of the West against the autocracy." Napoleon III at the beginning of 1855 was eager to set out for the war. It was proposed that the Empress should accompany him as far as Con- stantinople, or possibly to the Crimea. In a letter of 26 February he revealed his plan to Lord Palmer- ston, offering to double his army if England would provide the transports. The Emperor's presence at the seat of war was for many reasons undesired by English statesmen. Lord Clarendon met Na- 71 The Young Wife poleon at Boulogne, and did his utmost to shake his resolution. Opinion in Paris and in the French camp was alike opposed to the project. The Em- peror's decision still hung in the balance when, on 15 April, 1855, he left Saint Cloud with his young wife, on a visit to Queen Victoria at Windsor. Flattering accounts of the Empress must have reached the Queen from her statesmen. Lord Malmesbury, describing a dinner in November, 1853, says: "The Empress looked handsomer than ever, and her manner of receiving her guests and visitors was perfection. She spoke to me a great deal about the Pope at Rome, and the state of Ro- man Catholics there and in Ireland. On the question of the excesses of the English press and its, to her, apparent indifference to assassination, I found it hopeless to explain this abuse of our liberty, although I did not tell her the publications in Switzerland against the Emperor are far worse than anything that could be written or tolerated in England, being full of lies and obscenity with regard to him." Lord Palmerston, who dined at St. Cloud in 1854, wrote : " The dinner was very handsome, and our hosts very agreeable. The Empress was full of life, animation, and talk, and the more one looks at her, the prettier one thinks her." There was curiosity on both sides, we may be sure, when Napoleon's wife accepted the invitation of Queen Victoria. The Emperor had frankly de- scribed himself as a parvenu monarch, and Eugenie, though no parvenu, was not of royal blood. A dense fog hung over the Channel on Monday, 16 April, as their Majesties drew near our shores 72 The Visit to England on board the steam-yacht Pdican. Prince Albert had come to Dover overnight, and was out by 9 a.m., receiving an address from the Mayor and Corporation. Long, ornate, and dignified are the newspaper descrip- tions of the scenes at Dover> At the landing-stage " Prince Albert might be seen, handing the Empress on shore, with the combined dignity and grace of which His Royal Highness is so conspicuous a master." " Her Majesty was most simply attired in a chape au de paille, a grey paletot, and — rejoice, Caledonia! — a tartan dress of a quiet and unobtrusive pattern." Captain Smithett, who piloted the French yachts through the fog, is described as " the veteran Palinurus of the Channel." The Imperial guests proceeded at once to their hotel, a crowd, among whom was Mr. Thackeray, gazing at them wistfully through the glass doors. After luncheon the Corporation's address was pre- sented, " the Empress having exchanged her grey jacket for a magnificent visite of black lace." The reception in London was most enthusiastic. " Never within the recollection of man," said the Daily News, " has so remarkable a procession been witnessed in the capital of England. The whole population of London lined the streets and parks. It was neither more nor less than the whole English nation, from the Duke to the cabman, turning out as for a holiday, determined to honour the guest of their Queen and the chief magistrate of the great nation with which we are allied." The route to Paddington Station was a continuous blaze of colour, and the well-known strains of " Partant pour la Syrie " were heard on every hand. 73 The Young Wife One important personage was nearly left behind in the fog. The Pttrel, which carried the gentlemen of their Majesties' suite, reached Dover half an hour later than the Pdican. As Colonel Fleury with his companions was entering his carriage at Charing Cross, he felt his arm pulled and heard the pleading words, " Please, Colonel, let me get up with the valets behind this carriage, else I shall never be able to join them, and shall arrive too late for the Em- press's toilette. Think of my hard fate, Colonel ! If I can only reach Windsor when you do, I can at least say I did my best." The speaker was Felix, the coiffeur of the Empress, who had crossed by the Petrel, and whom Fleury at the moment could hardly recognize, so overwhelmed was he by the sense of his responsibility, while sea-sickness had given a greenish tint to his complexion. Felix was allowed to travel with the equerries, and on reaching Windsor the good-natured Colonel of the Guides hastened to make his excuses to the Empress. " I hope," re- plied Her Majesty, with composure, " that Felix will not kill himself in despair : my women have done my hair very well." Queen Victoria's Journal supplies details of the arrival at Windsor. " I advanced and embraced the Emperor, who received two salutes on either cheek from me, having first kissed my hand. I next embraced the very gentle, graceful, and evidently very nervous Empress. We presented the Princes and our children (Vicky with very alarmed eyes making very low curtsies). The Emperor embraced Bertie and then we went upstairs, Albert leading the Empress, who in the most engaging manner 74 Queen and Empress refused to go first, but at length, with graceful re- luctance, did so, the Emperor leading me, expressing his great gratification at being here and seeing me, and admiring Windsor." Queen Victoria observes that the Empress was as eager as her husband that he should go to the Crimea, seeing no greater danger for him there than in Paris. " She said she was seldom alarmed for him, except when he went out quite alone of a morning. . . . She is full of courage and spirit, and yet so gentle, with such innocence and enjouement that the ensemble is most charming. With all her great liveliness, she has the prettiest and most modest manners." " Her manner," the Queen wrote later in the visit, " is the most perfect thing I have ever seen — so gentle and graceful and kind, and the courtesy so charming and so modest and retiring withal." The suite set apart for the Emperor and his wife at Windsor was that which contained the Rubens, Zuccarelli, and Vandyke pictures. The Emperor's bedroom had been occupied by the Czar Nicholas I and by Louis Philippe. On Tuesday, 17 April, the Imperial guests ac- companied the Queen to a review in Windsor Park. The hero of the day was Lord Cardigan, who led the Light Brigade at Balaclava. On Wednesday, the 18th, Napoleon was made a Knight of the Garter. The ladies spent the morn- ing alone, for a Council was sitting in the Castle. As the luncheon hour drew near, the Queen became anxious. The Chapter of the Order was to meet at four, and special preparations of dress must be made. 75 The Young Wife The Empress advised Her Majesty to go into the Council Room. " I dare not enter/' she said, " but your Majesty may do so." The Queen knocked at the door, entered, and asked what should be done. The Emperor and the Prince Consort rose and said they were coming, but as they still continued in conference, the ladies lunched alone. These days at Windsor laid the foundation of that friendship between our late gracious Sovereign and the Empress Eugenie which survived all vicissitudes and ended only with Queen Victoria's life. Greville observed that the Queen omitted none of the usual forms practised between royal personages, and that " none of the sovereigns who have been here before were received with such magnificence by the Court, or with such curiosity and delight by the people." A few Frenchmen were silly enough to misunder- stand the popular welcome, as may be gathered from the remark of Viel Castel in his journal : " The Em- peror has been received in London as the protector of old England." Thursday, 19 April, was the date of the Guildhall banquet. All along the route vast crowds greeted our Imperial ally. It was remarked that as Na- poleon's carriage passed along King Street, St. James's, he pointed out to the Empress the house in which he had formerly lived as an exile. On passing the Horse Guards he stood up and saluted the colours. The Empress wore on this occasion a green dress adorned with lace, and a white bonnet, light and delicate as a snowflake. The people, like the Queen, 76 The Guildhall Banquet were, in Greville's phrase, " exceedingly pleased with both of them." A tempest of cheers followed Napoleon's remark at the banquet, " For myself, I have retained on the throne the same sentiments of sympathy and esteem for the English people that I professed as an exile, while I enjoyed here the hospitality of your country." Popular feeling towards the Empress was happily expressed in Punch : — Nor small share in this welcome is hers who sits by thee, Like a pale blush rose planted by a dark, rock-rooted tree. The people's voice approves the choice, made not for royal grace, But better, for a gentle heart, and for a sweet, sweet face. The crowd's untutored chivalry goes with the bonny bride, Whose beauty wears the trace of cares — what wonder, by thy side ? — Goes with her love, her hopes, her fears — prays that her fate may prove More kind than hapless Josephine's, unblessed by pledge of love. A State ball, a gala performance at the Opera, and a visit to the Crystal Palace, filled up the hours of this very busy week, and on Saturday Napoleon and Eugenie left Buckingham Palace, on their return journey. The farewell scene proved that the young Empress had gained the affection of the Queen's children. " The Princess Victoria," says Fleury, II threw herself sobbing into the arms of her friend." Prince Arthur, the Queen's youngest son, was a special favourite with the Emperor, having won his heart by presenting two violets on his birthday. A year later, when thanking the Queen and Prince Albert for congratulations on the birth of his son, Napoleon hoped his Louis might resemble " dear 77 The Young Wife little Prince Arthur," and might have "the rare qualities of your children." The most interesting description of the Imperial visit to London is that of Countess Bernstorff . She says : " The English people assured him [Napoleon] of an enthusiastic welcome ; the upper ten were less enchanted with the visit. They pitied the Queen openly because she was obliged to play the hostess to this parvenu pair." It was even said that the whole business was a humiliation for the Queen. Great anxiety, according to the Countess, was felt lest some attack should be made on Napoleon during his English visit, and the police redoubled their pre- cautions. Countess Bernstorff and her husband attended the reception of the diplomatic corps at the French Embassy. " The Emperor and Empress stood with their backs to the window, with their military suite behind them. By the Emperor's side was Count Walewski, next to the Empress Countess Walew- ska, and beyond her the Empress's ladies-in-waiting. . . . While my husband was conversing with the Emperor, I had a fairly long chat with the Empress. She pleased me by her simplicity, her ease in talk, and her charming manners. She expressed a wish to see me and my husband in Paris during the Ex- hibition. After that she talked about the journey, and the kind reception in London. She regretted that I had been indisposed, and hoped that my coming out to-day would not hurt me. Napoleon then talked to me about Paris, my long residence there, my father, etc. . . . Our conversation was brought to an end by the arrival of the Danish re- 78 Countess Bernstorff's Narrative preservative." The Countess tells that Mr. Buchanan, the American Ambassador, made a rather awkward reply when the Emperor spoke of the kindly re- ception given to him in New York during his exile. " Oh," said Mr. Buchanan, " I hope your Majesty will never return there again ! " " Why not ? " replied the Emperor coolly. " Travelling has be- come so easy nowadays that I might visit America as easily as London." The quick-eyed Countess observed that Walewski's manner to his Sovereign was neither very submissive nor very respectful. She further reports, on good authority, that Queen Victoria had been greatly excited in anticipation of the visit, and walked up and down the room on the arrival day, repeating, " How nervous I am ! " .... "The Empress Eugenie's behaviour was modest and almost shy. She seemed deeply touched by the cordiality of her reception. During the visit she always kept behind the Queen, who on several occasions politely offered to yield precedence to her, but in the end always herself went first." Both the Imperial guests paid great attention to the Queen's children. Eugenie's manner to the Queen was full of graceful deference. " People were rather surprised," writes the Countess Bernstorff, " that Queen Victoria on all public occasions went in front with the Emperor, and allowed the Empress to bring up the rear with Prince Albert. I myself, I must confess, thought this conduct absolutely correct, but many thought it would have been more becoming not to leave the Empress so completely in the shade." In the opinion of this German critic, " the Empress can scarcely 79 The Young Wife be called a beautiful woman ; she is pretty, elegant, and very ladylike — neither more nor less than that. This was the impression that she made on every one. The Duchess of Cambridge said to me, " She is no Empress and no Princess, but a lovable woman, comme il fani" To the Hanoverian representative Queen Victoria said, " N'est elle pas delicieuse ? " In the Council held at Windsor the English states- men present had strongly opposed the project of the Emperor's journey to the Crimea, and the idea was tacitly abandoned after the attempt on his life by Pionori (28 April, 1855). He had left the Tuil- eries on horseback about five in the afternoon, in- tending to join the Empress, who was driving in the Bois de Boulogne. In the Champs-Elysees a man rushed out from a side-alley and fired two shots in rapid succession. Fortunately he missed his aim. The Emperor, who showed perfect coolness, spoke a few reassuring words to the people who crowded round him, and quietly continued his ride. The would-be assassin was taken afterwards and executed. Amid scenes of overwhelming enthusiasm the Em- peror and Empress drove back an hour later to the palace. It was noticed that the Empress looked pale and held her handkerchief to her eyes. At the Tuileries princes and ministers were waiting to congratulate the Sovereign. " You see, gentlemen," he remarked, " that it is not so easy to kill me." In reply to congratulations from the Senate he said, with serene dignity, " I shall not fear the assassin's hand till my work is done." The Industrial Exhibition of 1855 drew countless guests to Paris. Among them were the Queen 80 jT #j# THE EMPRESS EUGENIE AS A YOUNG WIFE. Aft Collection : August in ' Queen Victoria in Paris and Prince Albert, with Princess Victoria and the Prince of Wales. Strange as was the caprice of fortune by which the nephew of our greatest enemy became the idolized guest of the British people, the presence of Queen Victoria as a guest at Saint Cloud was an even more significant event in the eyes of Europe. It set the seal on the Anglo-French alliance, and it admitted Napoleon III to the comity of sovereigns. Such an honour was as precious as a victory, serving on the one hand to enhance his prestige with his own people, and on the other to strengthen French influence abroad. By their jubi- lant acclamations on every occasion when the Queen appeared in public, the Parisians showed their ap- preciation of her presence amongst them. Her Majesty appears to have felt genuine pleasure in meeting once more " that extraordinary man," whom she found it impossible not to like, and even to admire. On Saturday, 18 August, the English royal party left Osborne for Boulogne on the Victoria and Albert, and were received by their host at the landing-stage. Late that evening, after a brilliant reception in Paris, they arrived at Saint Cloud, where the Empress awaited them. She was at that time in delicate health, and took little part in the innumerable ex- cursions arranged for the Queen and Prince Albert. 11 The Empress," wrote the Prince Consort, "is in expectation of an heir, and suffering." The State ball at Versailles was for her the chief excitement of the week. " The Empress met us at the top of the staircase, looking like a fairy queen or nymph in a white dress, trimmed with bunches of grass and G Si The Young Wife diamonds — a beautiful tour de corsage of diamonds round the top of her dress, and all en riviere, the same round her waist and a corresponding coiffure, with her Spanish and Portuguese orders. The Emperor said, when she appeared, ' Comme tu es belle I ' " Queen Victoria, whose words I have quoted, found time for intimate and womanly talks with her hostess in the private apartments at Saint Cloud. Countess Tascher de la Pagerie says that the Em- press eclipsed her royal guest by her dazzling beauty and her supreme elegance, but the Queen of England was always the Queen ! No thoughts of petty jealousy disturbed Queen Victoria's heart. " I am delighted to see how much Albert likes and admires her," she had written at Windsor, " as it is so seldom I see him do so with any woman." On leaving Saint Cloud Her Majesty wrote, " I am deeply grateful for these eight very happy days." The Empress gave the Queen a beautiful fan, with a rose and helio- trope from the garden, while she clasped on the arm of Princess Victoria a bracelet set with rubies and diamonds, in which her own hair was enclosed. In October, 1855, an announcement in the Moni- teur confirmed the universal hope that the new year might bring, not only the earnestly desired blessing of peace, but a child to the Emperor's home. The Countess of Montijo came from Spain to be with her daughter. The position of that clever lady had not been altogether easy since the marriage. The Empress had secured for her a costly home in the Champs-Elysees, but Napoleon was not always on good terms with his mother-in-law, and in 1854 she had returned to Madrid. 82 Birth of the Prince Imperial On Sunday morning, 16 March, 1856, the guns of the Invalides announced the birth of a prince. It had been known on Saturday evening that the Empress was dangerously ill, and that the Emperor was in an agony of apprehension. Lord Malmes- bury reports that " for fifteen hours the Emperor sobbed and cried without ceasing," and was so over- come by the reaction of gladness after the joyful event that he rushed into the next room and em- braced the first five persons he met. During the whole of Saturday groups lingered on the Place de Carrousel and in the Tuileries gar- dens. At the Invalides, artillerymen stood at their guns all day with matches lighted, expecting every moment the signal flame from the palace. When the guns were heard at 6 a.m. on Palm Sunday, the people of Paris counted anxiously. There would be twenty-one volleys for a girl, a hundred and one for a boy. When the certainty that an heir had been born to the throne took possession of the populace, there was an outburst of spontaneous and universal gladness, not only among the Bonapartists, but among all friends of public order. "A Prince Imperial," says M. de la Gorce, " meant that the continuity of the Empire was assured. It meant also the setting aside of Prince Napoleon, and in the opinion of many, the second advantage was at least equal to the first." The Court preacher, the Abbe Deplace, chose the Palm Sunday text from the 118th Psalm, " Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," and it was felt that the old words had a new and tender meaning. In closing his sermon the Abbe offered 83 The Young Wife prayer for the child that had been born to France : " It is Thou, O Lord, who hast blessed in an heir to the throne the faith of the Prince who proclaims before all the world his mission, and the charity of the pious Princess who honours herself in being the protectress of the unfortunate and the mother of Thy poor. Complete Thy mercies, O Lord. Watch over his cradle, with which so many hopes are bound up. Form him Thyself to be the happiness of a great people. Give him from his father genius and magnanimity, from his mother kindness and in- exhaustible benevolence, and from both sincere faith and devoted religion. To sum up all, give him a heart worthy of his destiny and worthy of his name." The ondoiement, or private baptism of the Prince, took place that Sunday in the Chapel of the Tuil- eries. He was carried by Madame Bruat, governess of the children of France, widow of the gallant Ad- miral Bruat who died on the Montebello in 1855, on his return from France to the Crimea. She was a charming woman, with gentle, Madonna-like coun- tenance, and was compared to the Angel of the Fatherland bending over the cradle of the princely child. The under-governesses were Madame Bizot and Madame de Brancion, and their duties were shared by an English lady, Miss Shaw, to whom the little Prince became fondly attached. A beautiful Burgundian peasant was chosen as his nurse. In her red skirt, black velvet bodice, and small cap of lace, she was one of the most picturesque figures in the palace. Almost every hour, during these early days, the Emperor came to look at his heir, as 84 The Private Baptism he slumbered in the regal cradle, covered with lace and ribbons. For the ceremony of the ondoiement the infant was wrapped in a magnificent blue cloak, bordered with gold. The names given him were Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Joseph. The Pope was his godfather, and the Queen of Sweden his godmother. " I have never forgotten the face of that poor little Prince," says General Fleury, " when we went to take him from the cradle, in which he lay half hidden under the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour. He was calm, and seemed to understand, without any surprise, the honours that were paid to him." The baby, Fleury adds, had unusually well-marked features. Among the many poems addressed to the Imperial child the most beautiful was that of Theophile Gautier, who compared him to the Holy Infant, Qui porte en sa petite main Pour globe bleu, la paix du monde Et le bonheur du genre humain. The poet foreshadowed a bright future for the son of France, if he followed his father's glorious star : Suis bien le sillon qu'il te marque Et vogue, fort du souvenir, Dans ton berceau devenu barque Sur l'oc6an de l'Avenir. The tender lines of Camille Doucet may also be quoted : Dors, enfant, et que Dieu t'inspire, Dormez aussi, mere, sans peur ; La France, qui pour vous conspire Vous donnait naguere un empire ; Vous lui donnez un empereur. 85 The Young Wife On Tuesday, 18 March, the Emperor received the congratulations of the Senate, the Legislative Body, and the Council of State. " France breathes more freely," said the President of the Senate, "by the birth of this child. She associates her future with his destinies. When he shall reign over this Empire, which Grotius called the finest under heaven, the nineteenth century having reached its extreme period will gather the fruits, the productive seed of which has been sown by our generation in the present." The note of affection and loyalty breathed through the congratulatory addresses, but the Emperor's replies were deeply marked by the lessons of a gloomy experience. " History," he said, " has teachings which I shall not forget. It tells me that the favours of fortune should never be abused, that a dynasty has a chance of stability only while it remains faithful to its origin and has a care for the popular interests for which it has been created. This child, conse- crated in his cradle by the peace we are preparing, by the blessing of the Pope, carried to him by elec- tricity an hour after his birth, and by the acclama- tions of the French people whom the Emperor loved so well, — this child, I say, will be worthy of the destiny which awaits him." In the overflowing delight of the hour the Em- peror had even thrown himself into the arms of his disappointed and angry cousin, Prince Napoleon, entreating him to love and protect the child. King Jerome's son hardly troubled to conceal his annoy- ance. Perhaps he consoled himself with the re- flection with which the Times tempered the re- 86 The Baptism at Notre Dame joicings in England over the birth of an heir to our Imperial ally : " From the accession of Louis XIV to the present time not a single King or Governor of France, though none of them, with the exception of Louis XVIII, has been childless, has been succeeded at his demise by his son." The arrival of innumerable presents for mother and son testified to the joy of the people. Some, like the huge cask of honey, the carriage of which cost twenty francs, were more embarrassing than welcome. The Emperor announced that he would be godfather and the Empress godmother to all French children born in wedlock on 16 March, 1856. Each was to receive three thousand francs, the boys to be called Louis Eugene and the girls Eugenie- Louise. It was estimated that about two thousand five hundred children received the honour. This graceful act was extremely popular with the masses, and not less so was the foundation of a home for orphan boys, to be called " L'Orphelinat du Prince Imperial," in commemoration of the birth of an heir to the crown. The Empress made a slow and difficult recovery, and it was not till Saturday, 14 June, that she was well enough to drive to Notre Dame for the baptism of her son. Cardinal Patrizi, the representative of Pius IX, arrived in Paris for the ceremony, and was received with dstiinguished honours. The Prince, carried in the arms of Madame Bruat, was robed in a red mantle lined with ermine. The scene in the Cathedral was almost as splendid as at the Imperial wedding, the ancient building being again trans- formed with rich banners and tapestries, while the 87 The Young Wife rank and fashion of the capital assembled in galleries erected on either side of the choir. When the ceremony was complete, Madame Bruat placed the Prince in the arms of the Empress, who was to hold him up to the people. Seeing that through weakness and agitation the young mother was scarcely equal to the task, the Emperor took the boy and held him proudly before his subjects, while a chamberlain, advancing to the entrance of the choir, cried three times, " Vive le Prince Im- perial! " In the evening the City of Paris gave a banquet to their Majesties at the Hotel de Ville, and the festivities culminated in a magnificent ball at the same place on Monday the 16th. The Empress opened the ball with Baron Haussmann, then Pre- fect of the Seine. From earliest days the Prince was called by the pet name of Loulou. Strange as it may seem, the enemies of Eugenie have reproached her with a lack of tenderness to her only child. General de Ricard, formerly an aide-de-camp to King Jerome, says in his curious memoirs, Autour des Bonaparte : "It was no secret at the time, and is no secret now, that the Empress did not show herself a very tender mother. People said that she did not seem to love her son." The charge of unmotherliness is refuted by every action of the Empress's life. A treasure which she valued highly and kept until 1870 in her bedroom at the Tuileries, was the golden rose presented to her by the Pope on the occasion of the Prince's baptism. Cardinal Patrizi, in offering it, addressed her Majesty in Latin. " This rose," he said, " signifies the joy of the two 88 The Golden Rose Jerusalems, — that is, of the Church triumphant and the Church militant. This rose represents, in the eyes of all the faithful, that most magnificent flower, the joy of the saints. Accept this rose, beloved and noble daughter, puissant and adorned with many gracious qualities, in order that thou mayest be still more ennobled by all the virtues in Jesus Christ, like a rose planted by the banks of a full-flowing stream. May this boon be granted unto thee, through the ever-abundant favour of Him Who to all eternity is Three in One." In 1855 the Emperor had asked the " blind Apostle," Mgr. de Segur, to pray for the Empress and for France. Amid the twofold rejoicings of March, 1856, when peace had come and the throne was established by the birth of an heir, it seemed as if the prayers of the saintly Bishop had been answered. 89 CHAPTER V THE EMPRESS AND HER COURT The homes of the Empress — Spiritualism at the Tuileries — The great balls — Masked dances — The " Mondays of the Empress " — Orsini's crime. NAPOLEON and Eugenie divided the year be- tween three palaces — the Tuileries, Saint Cloud, and Compiegne. There were visits to Fontaine- bleau during the hunting season, and an annual autumn sojourn in the Villa Eugenie at Biarritz. Two of the great houses have been swept away, and it is at Compiegne that the Empress is most vividly remembered. The little town by the Oise has a clean and courtly aspect. It shows, indeed, as Stevenson says, a fine profile above the river, with its town- hall, " a monument of Gothic insecurity," and the stately church of St. Jacques, in which Joan of Arc heard her last mass before she was captured by the Burgundians. From the windows of the Hotel de la Cloche we look on the market square, which has for its chief ornament a statue of the Maid. At all hours we hear the sweet chiming of the Hotel de Ville clock, for the three cavaliers who delighted " R. L. S." still strike their hammers on the little bells, though they have become rather awkward and rheumatic in their movements. The townsfolk crowd the square every Thursday evening to hear 90 Compiegne Palace an excellent concert given by the regimental band. Irregularly built shops and houses border the square on all sides, some with lichen creeping over the brown roofs, while others show green gardens near the attic windows. There are timbered dwellings with gabled fronts, which may be almost as old as the statue of Louis XII, who rides for ever in front of the town- hall. Beyond the steep chimneys there is a gleam of landscape, with fields and wooded heights. A ten minutes' walk brings us to the palace, which dates from the reign of Louis XV. Under the Second Empire the Court was held here in October and November. There is nothing homelike now in that endless succession of rooms, filled with Gobelins tapestries and pretentious flowered furniture, but the Empress, who was always a home-maker, knew how to arrange comfort for her husband and her boy. Bare in its ceremonial dignity is the Salle des Gardes, a long, empty room adorned with the busts of Roman Emperors, black Moors' heads, and clusters of lances. The Galerie des Fetes, with its twenty Corinthian pillars, was the scene of mag- nificent balls under both Empires. Visitors linger longest in the bedroom and dressing-room of the Empress, the former upholstered in crimson and the latter in pale blue. The Empresses Josephine and Marie Louise occupied these rooms before Eugenie. The furniture, though very rich, is more sumptuous than convenient. Farther on we come to the dining-room and bedroom of the Prince Im- perial, drearily formal abodes for a child. Almost all that was personal and friendly in this vast place has vanished. The only exceptions, perhaps, are 91 The Empress and her Court the chessboard and the breakfast service of Napoleon I, which might have strayed from the Musee Carna- valet in Paris. We carry from Compiegne Palace the recollection of cold white halls and staircases, giant tapestries representing mythological and Scrip- ture scenes, priceless Sevres vases, and the dazzle of silk and gold. There is nothing to remind us that human hearts loved and suffered within these walls, and that here was played the first act in the Em- press's drama. We can understand the impulse which drove her in all weathers to the green forest which stretches for miles beyond the park, the forest with its dim alleys, in which the first words of love were spoken to her by Napoleon, as their horses paced side by side among the fallen leaves. The woodland was her trysting-place, and to-day the widest and most romantic of the forest glades is known as the Avenue Eugenie. The Empress was a child of the sunlight and the open air, a rapid and untiring walker. She loved to watch the barges moving up and down the Oise on autumn after- noons, past the willow-clad islet in mid-stream and the rowan trees which bend their red clusters near the bridge. Even in rainy Novembers she was out of doors each day, and would mock at the Court ladies who dreaded soiled skirts or muddy boots. Parties of guests were invited to Compiegne for visits of a week's duration. All were free until luncheon, and at two o'clock the afternoon's pro- gramme was arranged. The Empress's favourite drive was to Pierrefonds, ten miles from Compiegne. Chars-a-bancs, holding twelve or fifteen persons, often conveyed a merry company to this old feudal 92 Pierrefonds castle, which had been restored at a cost of 5,000,000 francs by Viollet-le-Duc. Eugenie called it her Windsor, and used often to travel as Countess of Pierrefonds. She admired the motto of the ancient lords, " Qui veult peult," and it gave her pleasure to appear as Semiramis, the central figure in the group of nine heroines over the hearth in the " Salle des Preuses." The Castle of Pierrefonds, as it towers above the lake and village, looks like the habitation of giants of the primeval world. Enemies might batter in vain against these huge walls, pierced at rare in- tervals by narrow loopholes. Incidents of the siege of Torquilstone come to mind as we examine this tremendous fortress. The least imaginative visitor, as he crosses the drawbridge and enters the lordly courtyard of the Castle, must realize something of the glory and chivalry of the knights of old. France recognizes that the money spent in the restoration was well invested. Gay picnics were held here in the Empress's time, but to-day the Castle is purely a show-place, and to historical students a priceless object-lesson in mediaeval architecture. There are memories of Eugenie also at the Ponds of Saint Pierre, on the road from Pierrefonds to Vieux Moulin. The gamekeeper's lodge, still known as "le chalet de l'lmperatrice," was the favourite rendezvous for hunting-parties. The traveller who stands here, as I did, on a rainy autumn evening, with the wild wood sobbing around and the last rays of light glistening on the pale and reed-fringed waters, must realize the agonizing contrasts of the Empress's life. Who so gay as Eugenie when she sat here on horseback 93 The Empress and her Court among her courtiers, the blithest and most fearless of them all ? Who so lonely as the widowed Sovereign, when she crept back to this place long after her downfall, attended by one aged lady, Madame Lebreton, the faithful companion of her wanderings ? The broodings of the melancholy Richard II have been realized for Napoleon III and his consort : — What must the King do now ? must he submit ? The King shall do it ; must he be deposed ? The King shall be contented ; must he lose The name of King ? O, God's name, let it go. I'll give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, My subjects for a pair of carved saints, And my large kingdom for a little grave, A little, little grave. When the guests returned to Compiegne for the evening, amusements of many sorts were devised. Countess Tascher de la Pagerie mentions the char- ades, " often very badly played, our dear Empress always taking the least important parts." Charades and tableaux vivants were always popular under the Empire. Clever writers, like Prosper Merimee and Octave Feuillet, were employed to arrange them. One tableau represented the word " Harmonic" In the first scene, " Armes," that gifted sculptor, the Count de Nieuwerkerke, was seen arming a young knight, whose part was taken, it is said, by the grace- ful Countess Fleury. In the second, "Au Nid," the Prince Imperial was shown reclining in a bowery nest. Another word chosen was " ermite," in which the syllables were divided as " air " and " my the," 94 Guests at Compiegne and the whole turned on the temptation of St. An- thony. A spelling-bee occasionally beguiled the dull hours before bedtime, and it was said that the Austrian Ambassador, Prince Metternich, made the fewest blunders. Blind-man's buff was another favourite game, at which the ladies tried hard to catch the Emperor. " The truth is," writes a great lady who was often a guest at Compiegne, " we did little else than dress and chatter and undress." The Empress was an excellent hostess, encouraging compliments to other ladies, and exerting herself to set shy and youthful visitors at their ease. Literary men, artists, and musicians were frequently invited to her " series " of Compiegne entertainments. It was said, indeed, that the lovely Eugenie, satiated with compliments to her beauty, wished to be known as a woman of intelligence and culture, the friend of philosophers and poets. The ladies were asked to choose the gentleman who should take them in to dinner, and in this connection an amusing story is told of Sainte-Beuve. On his first visit to Compiegne a pretty girl came up to him and said, " M. Sainte- Beuve, will you take me to dinner ? " The author, puzzled by such a request, and wondering whether any " cabaret " or restaurant was likely to be found near the palace, hesitated and stammered. What would their Majesties think if he were to be running out at night with young ladies ? Nor was he satis- fied until Princess Mathilde explained the custom of the chateau. A glimpse of life at Compiegne is given by the Earl of Malmesbury in Memoirs of an ex-Minister. Writ- ing in 1857, he says : " The English ladies who 95 The Empress and her Court went to Compiegne for the fetes have just returned, and seem to have been greatly amused. They were struck by the freedom in conversation and manners of the Court, which is most remarkable in Princess Mathilde. Their forgetfulness of all convenances is quite incredible, and in more than one instance excited the disgust of the Empress as well as of her guests.'' Fontainebleau was a less favourite hunting-centre than Compiegne, but the Court was usually there for a few weeks in the autumn and occasionally in the early summer. The Empress had her gondolas and caiques on the lake, and it was in this palace that she arranged the curiosities brought from China after the war of i860. Here, as at Saint Cloud, she loved to go in disguise to the rustic fairs. In 1858, when the Queen of the Netherlands was staying in Paris, the Prince of Nassau decided to play a practical joke on the Empress. She had gone to buy ginger- bread at the fair of Fontainebleau, and the Prince, wearing a workman's blouse and cap, accosted her somewhat roughly in the forest. The Empress, failing to recognize her guest in his disguise, screamed out, her people rushed to her assistance, and the rumour spread through Paris that there had been an attempt at assassination. Sometimes Napoleon accompanied his wife in the dress of a modest bourgeois to these country fairs. Emperor and Empress would go into the circus- booths, and enjoy the fun unrecognized. It was their custom to send next day some handsome gift which revealed their identity. On one occasion, at Saint Cloud, the Empress interested herself in 96 THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON III. Amusements of the Court the " giant " of a circus, and helped him to a better position. In the early years of the Empire, a certain wild- ness was noted in Eugenie's mirth. The story is told that she went to one of the tall Cent-Gardes who was on duty in the corridor of a palace, and gently slapped him on the cheek to see if he could be startled out of his imperturbable composure. The effort failed. The soldier remained motionless, not a smile or a frown disturbing his solemn counte- nance. Five hundred francs were offered him as a reward, but he refused the money, saying it was honour enough for him that the hand of his beautiful Sovereign should have rested for a moment on his face. At Rambouillet one evening, during a romp which followed a hunting party, the Empress filled her pockets with flour and scattered it over the com- pany. Many anecdotes of a similar kind might be narrated. The Empress had been brought up in free- dom, without a check on her wayward impulses, and she could not quite abandon the gay licence of Carabanchel, even after she had become the mistress of a Court. Her childish frolics were often followed by relapses into a haughty mood, as if she wished to throw round her too hastily the cloak of majesty. By the uncertainty of her temper the Empress often gave unwitting offence to the great personages near the throne. One of the strangest incidents of Court life in the year following the birth of the Prince Imperial was the appearance of Home, the medium, at the Tuil- eries. At the French Court the astrologer and the H 97 The Empress and her Court wizard had ever found a welcome. Home was the natural successor of Galeotti, in Quentin Durward. The Second Empire, with all its boasted enlighten- ment, was in such matters little further advanced than the Valois Court under Catherine de* Medici. That was an age when books on fortune-telling and the black art were multiplied, when Nostradamus uttered startling prophecies about the first men of the kingdom, when even a highly cultured prelate and eminent preacher, the Cardinal of Lorraine, went in disguise, while in Rome, to consult a sooth- sayer. The ladies of the nineteenth century were not less credulous than their predecessors. They had not quite shaken off the belief in Nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, Dark- working sorcerers that change the mind, Soul-killing witches that deform the body, Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, And many such- like liberties of sin.* We know from a remarkable letter written by Lacordaire to Madame Swetchine that in 1853 spiritualistic phenomena were attracting notice in France. "Have you seen tables turn and heard them talk ?" he asks. " I would not condescend to see the turn- ing, as I thought that was too simple a business, but I have heard them talk and made them talk. They have told me some very remarkable things about the past and the present. Extraordinary as this may be, for a Christian who believes in spirits it is a very poor and vulgar phenomenon. In all ages there have been methods, more or less eccentric, of communicating with spirits." If a saint could • The Comedy of Errors. 98 Home the Medium write in this tone to another saint, need we wonder if the frivolous Court of the Second Empire was led away by the trickeries of Home ? Lacordaire re- fuses to accept these manifestations as a sign that " Antichrist is near," but he thinks " the poor un- believers must be much disquieted, and he ends solemnly with the words, " O profondeur des juge- ments de Dieu ! " The Emperor's character was strongly tinctured with superstition. In the life of Cardinal Mathieu we read that he showed the Cardinal the talisman he constantly wore, which had belonged to Charle- magne. " Like Charlemagne," he said, " I believe in my star." The prelate hastened to point out that such a confidence was not Christian but fatalistic, and that Charlemagne did not believe in any star, but in the protection of the saints. It is doubtful, however, whether the Emperor was personally in- fluenced by Home. The knockings on walls and floors, the gyrations of furniture — tables waddling across the room like the bell in Goethe's poem — must have seemed to him a contemptible pastime. The Empress, on the other hand, came strongly under the spell of the medium. Countess Tascher de la Pagerie describes Douglas Home, or Hume, as a young Scotsman aged twenty-one or twenty-two. His appearance was prepossessing, his manners simple and modest. He called himself an American, and claimed connection with the ducal house of Hamilton, the arms of which he bore engraved upon his seal. Neither time nor space, it was believed, had any existence for him. Through his means the spirits of St. Louis, Pascal, Rousseau, and even ancient worthies like Aristides and Solon, were 99 The Empress and her Court solemnly consulted, and replied with touching alacrity. Earl Granville saw something of the medium's tricks. "A certain Mr. Hume produces hands, raises heavy tables four feet from the ground with a finger, knocks on the Emperor's hand from a distance. The Emperor is rather pleased at the table coming more to him than to others, but seeing Lady Gran- ville and me look incredulous, he broke off, saying, ' They think us mad, and Lord Granville will report that the alliance is on a most unstable footing.' " Table-turning and spirit-rapping became the amusements of every drawing-room. The medium's glance was keen, and yet gently mournful, as if he sought to inspire pity. His behaviour was smooth and ingratiating, and he spoke French fluently, though with a marked British accent. He said that his mother, who was also a medium, had frequently appeared to him, and had advised him to give up the Protestant faith and become a Roman Catholic. She revealed herself in dreams and visions, assuring him of immortality. He had seen the lost souls in hell, and the suffering spirits in purgatory. " He magnetized us all," said the Countess, "by his superior power." Home was invited to the most exclusive houses in Paris, where great ladies bowed before him. He enjoyed that intoxicating experience described by his fellow-charlatan, Browning's " Sludge the Medium": — v c , , . a , You find you re in a flock Of the youthful, earnest, passionate — genius, beauty, Rank and wealth also, if you care for these, And all depose their natural rights, hail you (That's me, sir) as their mate and yokefellow, Participate in Sludgehood, nay, grow mine. IOO The Downfall of Home The statesmen round the Emperor detested the impostor. On his first evening at the Tuileries, Home, who was sitting with the crinolined ladies at a table in the mysterious twilight, suddenly an- nounced that two unbelievers were present, the Duke of Bassano and Count Walewski, and that until they left, the spirit would not be propitious. The Emperor laughingly asked them to go, but from that time Walewski, then Foreign Minister, kept Home under observation. He may not have be- lieved, as some did, that the young man was secretly an agent of the Court of Berlin, but he saw that the medium was exerting an unwholesome influence. In an evil hour for himself, Home began to meddle with politics and allowed his spirits to criticize the actions of the Council. Walewski then went to the Emperor and demanded his immediate dismissal. The juggler was permitted to accompany the Court to Biarritz, but foreign correspondence began to re- mark on his intimacy with the Empress, Walewski again became urgent, and Home disappeared as suddenly as he had come. Superstition was not rooted out by his departure, as we may gather from a story in Madame Adam's recent book, Mes Sou- venirs et Nos Id