The one happening of that time which was able to summon the Mary of
this record from her torpor was outwardly the most vainglorious of all.
I can see now that this was natural. For if the Villebecq puppet had
a greater love of empty ease as of empty excitement, it was the first
Mary who, from the dawn of consciousness, in those Bear Lawn days when
the Holy Bible shaped her earliest consciousness, had best loved pomp:
the pomp of words, the pomp of hate, the pomp of misery, the pomp of
God.
And here now came the pomp of rulers, the peculiar treasure of kings.
Not indeed till later years did I fully realize what a unique event
our Imperial visit was. Whether it is that parvenu sovereigns have to
be more careful of their dignity, and cannot, like monarchs of ancient
line, honour the hospitality of their subjects' roofs; the fact is that
throughout their reign Louis-Napoleon and Eugenie seem never to have
made a sojourn in any private mansion of their realm. Very occasionally
during their progress in the provinces, some château might be used as
a halting-place for luncheon or the night in place of the customary
palace or prefecture. _Ours_ was one such case. The Countess did not
hide (at any rate from us) that she had taken the liberty of addressing
herself to the Emperor, begging him on his tour through Normandy to use
her house as a halting-place: her humble excuse to His Majesty for her
presumption was her dear father's humble share in defending the First
Empire, and her dear husband's in founding the Second. She knew she was
touching the right chord. To help and to repay those who had befriended
him or his House was with the Emperor a principle, nay a mania: if
ingratitude be the hall-mark of princes, then was Louis-Napoleon most
spurious and unprincely metal. The privilege of a day and a night at
Villebecq was graciously accorded.
If I did not appreciate to the full the exceptional character of the
event, I none the less looked forward to it with disproportionate
excitement. On the great day I should, I knew, be the least of the
nobodies; but the idea of merely sleeping under the same roof with a
sovereign lord and lady, seeing them, hearing them, filled me with
servile delight. I rehearsed, anticipated, literally cried aloud in my
bedroom with the high joy of flunkeydom. Monarchs were sacred in my
eyes. They were the Lord's Anointed. Divinity hedged them about. It was
a sublimated snobbery that partook of both ecstasy and awe. Kings went
to my head like wine.
The Château was all astir with preparations. The musty state-bedroom
and neighbouring apartments in the unused wing were made fit for the
visitors and their suite; rescued from moths--for moths. Workmen
arrived from the villages, decorators from Caudebec and Rouen. Stable,
kitchen and larder girded themselves for the fray. The Countess was
in parlous state between the two conflicting voices of family pride
and family thrift: desire to shine and desire to pare. "Oh dear, the
expense" trod hard on "Of course we must do this."
In point of fact all arrangements were taken out of her hands by Elise
and de Fouquier, who, working in alliance--for the family honour Elise
would have worked in alliance with the Devil--were irresistible.
There being no gentleman in the house, nor any male relative on good
enough terms with the Countess to be imported for the occasion for
certain duties, Monsieur de Fouquier almost inevitably assumed the
rôle of master: he saw to the stables and carriages, arranged for
the disposition of the men-servants and the arrival at the station,
prepared a shoot for the Emperor. Elise's department was the Empress
and her suite, the furniture and the food.
I, too, made my preparations: in the library. All I could pick up in
anecdotes from the Countess or Elise, and all that books could tell me
about our illustrious guests, I greedily devoured: something in the
spirit of the Baedekered tourist, who learns up his *cathedrals and
**magnificent views in advance, equipping himself to understand what he
is to enjoy.
Wider reading made the Emperor Napoleon III dearer to me, as the
perfect type of Another Person who was precisely what I should have
been if I had been he: the Compleat Mary. He was a visionary whose most
outrageous splendours had come true, a Mary whose madness had won.
Till now the Empress had interested me less. I began to learn that she
too was a Woman of Destiny.
--On the day of her birth a great cataclysm burst over Granada,
lightning and thunder such as Spain had never seen or heard.
--Above her cradle appeared that mystic sign which tells that: To be a
Queen, you need not be born a Princess. That sign, shown once in many
centuries, was earnest to the proud child that God had destined her
for a crown. Folly?--but faith is folly come true. Dreams of greatness
absorbed her. Leading lady was the one part she could play on the
world's stage: the part for which the Playwright had cast her.
--One day, on a Spanish roadside, she gave charity and comfort to an
old blind cripple. "It is you," he cried, "you, whom God will reward
above all other women!"
"How? Oh tell me!"
"He will make you a Queen."
--A woman, she came with her mother and sister to France. It befell one
day that they were invited to an official dinner at Cognac. Among the
guests was an old Abbot, skilled in reading ladies' hands (and hearts);
one who, though he honestly believed in his art, took care that it
inspired him with none but pleasing prognostications. When came the
young Eugenie's turn to hold out her hand, the old man started back,
half in amazement, half in fear. The guests who were watching started
too, since they knew him for a sophisticated worldling, immune from all
surprise.
"What is it?" cried Eugenie.
"Señora--I see in your hand--"
"What then, Abbot? Quick, tell me."
"A--crown."
(Now the great Duke of Ossuna, Grandee of Spain, His Most Catholic
Majesty's Ambassador to the French Republic, was rumoured to have
longings, to nourish intentions.... It would be a magnificent marriage
for her, friends said.)
"A Duchess' crown?" she cried.
"No. One more brilliant and resplendent."
"Oh speak, sir, speak! What crown is it you see? It cannot be a
Queen's."
"No, señora, _an Empress's_."
--Folly! Austria and Russia were the world's toll of Emperors: portents
were mocking her. Still, suppose Destiny were reserving her some
faery fate? Suppose--and she said "No" to the Duke of Ossuna. Suppose
this comic "Prince-President" of the new French Republic, this poor
parrot-faced Louis-Napoleon, this parody of his great uncle--suppose
he carried the parody just one act further? (One never knows.) Once
introduced to Sick Poll-Parrot through friends in Paris, she lost no
single opportunity of meeting him--especially by chance. Ambition
is no idler, and toils at all his plans. She used humility and gave
admiring glances, employed her unmatchable beauty and gave alluring
ones; listened attractively to his every word, wrote devoted letters of
support. Soon whisperings reached her: the nation too was beginning to
say Suppose? After all, should not a Bonaparte don royaller headgear
than republican top hat? (Mad hopes grew bolder.) Yet the step was
no easy one: to re-establish Empire in Republican France was still a
conspirator's dream.
On December the Second the dream came true: multitudes acclaimed the
Third Napoleon. Not least Eugenie, for he had now that crown to bestow.
Soon she triumphed, and forced her way into his heart. He loved her.
An Emperor loved her. But love is little and marriage much. There, on
the very threshold of glory, lay a new danger. She faced it boldly.
Desperate in his amorous intent--one night that they chanced to be
spending under the same roof as Imperial host and humble guest--he made
seen his wish.
"Señora," in a voice plaintive with passion, "which is the way to your
bedroom?"
"Sire," she replied, "it lies through a well-lighted church."
What vice and ambition had achieved, virtue thus completed. Her purity
won the crown, the crown won her purity. Through the bannered luminous
nave of Notre Dame de Paris he made his way to her bedchamber, and she
hers to the girl's wild dream that had come true. Together they scaled
the highest peaks of human glory.
The morning of the arrival our Villebecq party assembled in good time
on the little wayside platform. The Countess was fussy, full of absurd
anxieties; Suzanne in the gayest spirits, Elise calm, de Fouquier
debonair. There were guests from neighbouring houses, François with
assistants to cope with the Imperial luggage, and a crowd of peasants
outside the barrier. During a long wait we kept straining ears and
eyes for a sign of the expected train: I could not help thinking of
Tawborough on the far-off day when Satan Came.
"Here it is!" cried Suzanne.
The Countess had a last convulsive movement of agony: "I do pray that
nothing may go wrong."
A stumpy little gentleman in tight-fitting clothes and an enormous
top-hat waddled awkwardly out of the carriage, and turned to help down
a showy and beautiful lady.
Short fat legs, a long highly-tailored body; a sallow leaden complexion
with two rouged-looking spots in the middle of each cheek; an aquiline
nose, with waxen surface; a goatee of hair on the chin looking like an
artificial tuft gummed to the skin; heavy drooping eyelids, and glassy
eyes through which he stared as through a window.
This was my Man of Destiny. This marionette in wax. The Thing had
movement but no life.
I started when I heard the Countess saying: "This is our English
friend, Miss Lee." I bowed low, confused with self-consciousness, and
with guilt for the thoughts I had been thinking.
"Good-day, Miss Lee," I heard him saying in slow measured English,
"you do not get such glorious weather in your country!" At the moment
of shaking hands he looked me straight in the eyes with a smile of
dumbfounding charm. The grey eyes lit up, solved the riddle, showed
that Waxworks had a human heart. Except in my Grandmother, I never saw
such infectious kindliness in a look. "No," he was saying, "I know your
London fogs."
"I don't know London, Sir--" I was beginning, by way of exculpation.
"Calumny!" cried the fine lady. "Why up in Scotland we used to get week
after week of glorious weather. It is all calumny, our French talk
about the English climate."
Active, supple, fresh, full of pride and health, she was an extreme
contrast to the man. Her eyes, unlike his, were frank and honest:
unlike his, they were hard. Instead of dreamy dishonest kindness, I
saw greedy consciousness of her beauty and prestige. Her nostrils
quivered as she drank in our homage. She loved nothing save herself and
her pleasures. She was gorgeously dressed. She was bold, beautiful,
forthright, hard: the complete incarnation of our Brethren "worldly."
She possessed the Empire of France, but not the Kingdom of Heaven.
What glory--not vicarious only--to be taking part in that informal
procession along the country roads! In the old coronetted family
coach sat the sovereigns, with the Countess and Monsieur de Fouquier;
the suite, the guests, the two girls and I followed in four other
carriages. Dinner that night was a Sardanapalan affair: gay lights
and gorgeous dresses, wealth and wine, power and pride. The menu was
imperial; my diary, always an amply dietetic diary, records it in full.
Once or twice I thought of Aunt Jael's birthday banquet, and of Jesus
Christ on Calvary, who died to save these dolls.
When my eyes were not on my plate, they were chiefly on the Emperor.
Half the time he was lost in dreams, dead to the physical world around
him, infinities away. When the Countess or another addressed him, for
a moment the leaden eyes lit up, and a gentle, almost womanly smile
played on the slow lips; he spoke a few pointed yet diffident words,
then relapsed abruptly into his dreams. Not that the Countess noticed
this abruptness, which resembled her own. She had her own absorbing
reflections as hostess of this triumphant evening--this expensive
evening. Every new dish filled her with an exquisite conflict of
emotions. The guests were dominated by the laughing Empress; her
majestic beauty and her sparkling talk. I remember no single word of
her conversation, I only remember that it glittered. Nothing in her
really attracted me. I admired the beauty and the brilliance, but they
seemed to be separate entities, having nothing to do with her as a
woman, as a soul. Had she a soul?
One odd thing I noticed: the Emperor's coldness towards de Fouquier.
Knowing the imperial gratitude towards all who had helped him I
marvelled accordingly, and fell to seeking a reason. Perhaps in
reality de Fouquier never had helped Napoleon's cause, perhaps his
game during the Coup d'Etat had been a double one, running with the
Bonapartist hare and hunting with the Burgrave or Republican hounds?
At a later date I discovered that my surmise was exact. And Napoleon
knew. Fouquier, noting his manner, knew that he knew, and hated him
accordingly. I fancied I saw plans of revenge forming in the smooth
obsequious face. Once again Reason, who mocked at Fancy, was in the
wrong.
Next morning, while the gentlemen went shooting, the four of us
accompanied Eugenie and the ladies of her suite on a drive to
neighbouring scenes.
Elise had said, "Jumièges looks best in the very early morning."
"Good!" cried the Empress, "we will go before the dew has vanished. You
are sure it will not inconvenience you, my dear Countess?"
A rhetorical question, and a selfish one. The whole household rose
perforce at an unearthly hour of the night. I partly forgave her for
the reward our early visit earned. In the brightening mist that follows
dawn, in the fragrant expectant silence, the majestic ruin loomed in a
mystery that noontide could never have lent.
All day I kept as near the Empress as I could, learning that the
queenly principle is to do exactly what you like: to be haughty and
indifferent to your ladies one moment, gushing and over-familiar the
next: to demand servile trembling and unseemly giggling turn by turn:
to allow all whims to yourself and none to others. Was not her whole
career compounded of similar contrasts? Her dream of becoming an
Empress was wild romantic folly: the steps she took to make it come
true were calculating, of the earth earthy. "Such another as you,"
propounded Conscience.
Loyal smiles and humble gratitude gave godspeed to the illustrious
pair. Among the servants the gratitude varied: where Napoleon had
passed--the Countess quizzed them all--tips were imperial. The one or
two Eugenie had given were almost as small as I (not yet an Empress)
would have bestowed.
"Five francs for Antoinette," repeated the Countess unwearyingly: "it
overcomes me. Five francs from an Empress! If it had been but ten--"