COURTSHIP AND ENGAGEMENT
When Prince Louis Napoleon was rather over twenty-six he wrote to his
father, the Comte de Saint-Leu:[31]
ARENENBERG, _June 5, 1834_.
MY DEAR PAPA,
Since I wrote to you, the death of Mlle. de P.’s father has
somewhat changed my marriage plans, for until now I did not know
any of the ladies whose names had been placed before me. I had
given attention only to the conventionalities, not to the
affections, which can only display themselves when one sees people
personally. Besides, the advantages I saw in the alliance which I
desired to contract no longer exist, and should I persist in my
matrimonial views, the best thing I can do is to cast my eyes upon
Mlle. de Padoue. You will give me much pleasure by replying to me
on this point, and giving me your advice, although I am in no hurry
to marry.
I enclose you a copy of a law just passed by the Government, which
has evidently been enacted against us, for it cuts short all the
claims that my family may have respecting the debts owing to it by
the French Government. In these circumstances, I believe that, if
it is intended to press the claim, there is only one way of doing
it--by commencing an action against the Government. It is
unfortunate that we did not hear earlier of this law, which was
passed without any noise, so that we might not be enabled to take
any steps in reference to it.
I have received a letter from Charlotte, and am going to answer it.
As I have not been very well for the last month, I am going very
shortly to take the waters at Baden, near Zurich, for a month.
With sincere attachment,
Your loving and respectful son,
NAPOLÉON-LOUIS B.
It was not until the following year, 1835, that the question of the
Prince’s marriage was publicly mooted. He was then living with his
mother in Switzerland, at the villa of Arenenberg. It was erroneously
reported that the Prince was about to marry Queen Doña Maria of
Portugal. Not sorry, perhaps, to attract attention by denying in the
Press the report of a marriage which he knew was impossible, the Prince
wrote the following letter to a provincial paper:
SIR,
Various journals publish that I am leaving for Portugal in the
character of a pretender to the hand of Queen Doña Maria. Flattered
as I am at the thought of an alliance with a young, beautiful, and
virtuous Sovereign, the widow of a cousin who was dear to me, it is
my duty to deny this rumour. I may add that, despite the interest I
feel in a nation which has conquered its liberty, I should
certainly refuse to share the throne of Portugal, if, by chance, it
were offered to me.
LOUIS NAPOLÉON.
The historian will search in vain should he attempt to identify the
other ladies “whose names had been placed before” the Prince.
The next heard of is the young Englishwoman, Miss Emily Rowles, of
Camden Place, Chislehurst, the home in later years of the Emperor and
Empress and their son. Miss Rowles indignantly terminated the
engagement--which had been definitively arranged--when she heard of the
relations which existed between the Prince and Miss Howard.
When he was residing in London (1847) the Prince aspired to the hand of
Lady Clementina Villiers, daughter of Lord and Lady Jersey. Lady Jersey,
however, disliked the suitor, and the affair was nipped in the bud. The
Prince had asked Lord Malmesbury if he had any chance of success with
the young lady, and was not encouraged by the reply, which appears to
have been in the nature of a gentle snub.
Miss Burdett-Coutts was not to be won by an adventurous French Prince,
although he was the nephew of Napoleon I.
Turn and turn about the Prince made advances to--
1. The daughter of the Prince de Wasa, husband of a daughter of the
Grand Duchess of Baden (née Stéphanie Louise Adrienne de Beauharnais).
2. Princess Adelaide of Hohenzollern, niece of Queen Victoria’s consort,
and sister of that Prince Leopold whose selection by Prim to occupy the
vacant throne of Spain, in 1870, led up to the war.
3. A daughter of the Prince de Wagram, who “did not please him,” and who
married Prince Joachim Murat.
4. The Infante Marie Christine, a daughter of Don François de Paule, and
sister of the consort of Queen Isabelle II.
Doubtless he had an affection for his cousin, Princesse Mathilde, and
felt a pang when the news reached him, at Ham, of her marriage with the
Russian Prince, Anatole Demidoff. Neither as President of the Republic
nor as Emperor of the French would the royal houses of Europe have
anything to do with the son of Queen Hortense.
Mlle. Eugénie de Montijo, Comtesse de Téba? She was unheard of as yet.
There was never any question in the minds of those who were ever so
little behind the scenes that Napoleon III. so completely “lost his
head” over “the beautiful Spaniard” that he seriously proposed to her
without knowing whither his impetuosity was carrying him. That marriage
was far from the Emperor’s intentions originally is highly probable.
When, however, he saw there was nothing for it but to make the young
lady his Empress, he allowed himself to be led with scarcely a word of
remonstrance and only the faintest of objections. His Majesty had to
deal with an experienced woman of the world in Mme. de Montijo, and with
a clever one in the person of Mlle. Eugénie de Montijo. It was a
question of “marriage or no marriage,” and the ladies gained the day.
The flirtation was remarkably strong while it lasted, and the Emperor
made himself the laughing-stock and butt of most of his monde, whose
ridicule, however, could not divert His Majesty from pursuing his
campaign with infatuated ardour.
Numberless stories are told of this diverting love-chase. Every year, in
October, there was a great gathering of guests at Compiègne. On one of
these occasions a société d’élite sat round a table playing cards while
waiting for tea. It was noticed that Mlle. de Montijo sat on the
Emperor’s right, and, the wives of some of the Ministers being present,
the circumstance was regarded as a sign of the times. The game was
vingt-et-un, and Mlle. de Montijo, who did not seem to be very expert,
consulted her neighbour on the left when she was in doubt what to do.
Presently, after looking at her cards, she showed them to the Emperor,
letting her eyes play the part of an inquirer. Napoleon III. replied,
“Keep them; you have a very good hand.” “No,” she remarked, “they’re not
good enough; I want all or nothing!” and she asked for more cards,
whereupon the dealer tossed her what proved to be an ace. Of course she
won, and she took up the stake with a smile which was interpreted by
those present as the triumph of the will over fortune.
The courting was nearly all done at Compiègne, and Mlle. de Montijo got
herself much talked about by her beauty, her grace, and her coquetry
with the Emperor, who, on his side, was driven almost frantic by the
malicious pleasantries of his uncle, King Jérôme, who, with the
wickedest smile, never omitted to ask the Emperor the first thing every
morning how matters were going. The attitude of the ladies of the Court
towards the woman whom they regarded as a usurper will be best
understood by what follows. One night, as they were going into dinner at
Compiègne, Mlle. de Montijo, conducted by Colonel de Toulongeon, was
walking immediately behind Mme. Fortoul, wife of the Minister of that
name. Quite by accident the first-mentioned couple took precedence of
Mme. Fortoul, who said to her escort, in a tone which all could hear,
“Why did you let that woman pass before us?”
Mlle. de Montijo heard the remark, and almost fainted. Her blue eyes
filled with tears, she ate nothing for dinner, and replied to all the
Emperor’s observations with a profound melancholy. After dinner the
Emperor went up to her and said:
“Are you unwell, mademoiselle?”
“No, sire. Why do you ask?”
“Because I noticed that you ate nothing, and I suppose that----”
“No sire; I repeat, I am not suffering; but here, in this very
room--here, chez vous, I have been insulted in the most flagrant manner,
and I think it my duty to tell your Majesty that I intend to leave
Compiègne this very evening.”
The Emperor begged her to explain, and the young lady told him, as well
as she could through her tears, what had happened.
“Mademoiselle,” said the Emperor, “promise me that you will not leave
Compiègne, and I promise you, in turn, that to-morrow nobody will dare
to insult you.” And the next day came the Emperor’s offer of marriage.
The Emperor’s intention to take to himself a wife was announced on
January 22, 1853, by a speech from the throne, in the course of which
His Majesty said the union which he was about to contract was not in
accordance with political tradition; but that was an advantage. “She who
is the object of my choice is of high birth. French by heart, by
education, by remembrance of the blood which her father shed for the
cause of the Empire, she has, as a Spaniard, the advantage of not having
in France a family upon whom it would be necessary to bestow honours
and dignities. Endowed with all the qualities of the soul, she will be
an ornament to the throne, even as in the hour of danger she will become
one of its courageous supports. Catholic and pious, she will address to
Heaven the same prayers that I myself offer for the happiness of France.
Gracious and good, she will, I firmly hope, revive, in the same
position, the virtues of the Empress Joséphine. Then, gentlemen, I say
to France, ‘I have preferred a woman that I love and respect to an
unknown woman, whose alliance might have had advantages mixed with
sacrifices.’ Presently, at Notre Dame, I shall present the Empress to
the people and to the army. The confidence which they have in me will
cause them to give their sympathies to her whom I have chosen; and you,
gentlemen, when you have learnt to know her, will be convinced that this
time again I have been inspired by Providence.”
Thus did Napoleon III. reverse the policy of his uncle, who divorced and
abandoned a woman who was loved to espouse a daughter of the Cæsars; the
former renounced the possibility of a royal marriage in order to wed a
woman whom he loved. The Court of the Tuileries was greatly divided on
the subject of the Emperor’s marriage. King Jérôme, Drouyn de Lhuys
(Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Persigny (Minister of the Interior)
were, with others, in favour of a dynastic alliance; Morny, Fould, and
the military party (nicknamed “the clan of the amoureux”), at the head
of whom were Edgar Ney, Toulongeon, etc., were for the marriage with the
fair daughter of the Montijos. The Emperor had, however, made up his
mind, and, despite his hesitating, uncertain character, which presently
accentuated itself still more, he resisted all the pressure put upon him
by his family. In vain did Princesse Mathilde throw herself,
theatrically, at his feet, beseeching him to abandon a marriage which
could only lower his prestige; Cæsar was immovable. Drouyn de Lhuys felt
so strongly about the marriage that he asked the Emperor’s permission to
resign his portfolio; but he must have changed his mind when he went to
do homage to Mlle. de Montijo. “I congratulate you,” she said; “I thank
you for the advice which you have given to the Emperor relative to his
marriage. Your advice was similar to mine.”
“The Emperor has betrayed me, then,” said the Minister.
“No; it is not betraying you to render homage to your sincerity, and to
tell me the opinion of a devoted servant--one who has expressed my own
sentiments. Like you, I have represented to the Emperor that he ought to
consider the interests of his throne; but I have not had to be his
judge, and to decide whether he is right or wrong.”
De Morny told one of his colleagues that the Emperor, having once got an
idea into his head, could not be disabused of it. More than one of his
courtiers said: “He is mad, and this marriage is an act of the grossest
stupidity.”
If the Emperor believed in his star, so did Mlle. de Montijo place an
implicit reliance upon hers. A gipsy fortune-teller once told her that
she would be a Queen. She might have made a good--nay, a
splendid--marriage long before she set her cap at the Emperor. The Duc
d’Ossuna was madly in love with her, and wished to make her his
Duchess. The Duc de Sesto proposed to her, but she declared she would
only marry a Frenchman.
The Emperor’s private friends were more difficult than the Ministers to
argue with, and he had many a mauvais quart d’heure with Mme. Drouyn de
Lhuys, Mme. Fortoul,[32] and Mme. de St. Arnaud, the latter the wife of
the celebrated Marshal who fought with us in the Crimea. These grandes
dames sneered at the fair interloper, as they considered Eugénie de
Montijo. When they were at Compiègne they did all in their power to snub
her and make her look small. To such a point, indeed, did they carry
their persecution that the victim complained to the Emperor, who,
observing that all the ladies in question were close by, broke a branch
off a tree, and, twisting it into a crown, put it on Eugénie’s head,
with the remark (which all had the satisfaction of hearing), “Take this
until I give you the other!”
Judging by those who are, or were, in a position to know, it would seem
that the Empress was somewhat coquettish. Her Imperial Majesty, however,
never publicly compromised herself, as the ex-Queen Isabella of Spain is
credited with having done. She was flirty, that was all: the sort of
woman that “Gyp” has sketched in “Autour du Mariage”; perhaps “Gyp” got
her idea of Paulette d’Alaly from the former fair ruler of the
Tuileries. “You know,” said the Emperor to one of his Ministers who had
complained of the Empress’s attitude towards him--“you know the Empress
is very hasty, but, au fond, she likes you very much.” She was not,
however, hypocritical, but may be compared to a child who has got tired
of a toy and cries for another. She became possessed of all manner of
fancies, and was exceedingly romantic, while remaining perfectly
mistress of herself.
“It is a delicate question,” writes one of her biographers, “and I
approach it with the greatest circumspection; but was the Empress the
passionnée she was said to be, and was she faithful to the Emperor?
Merely to ask the question was to misunderstand the Empress. Had she any
love intrigues? Was she always the woman who is said to have confessed
to the Emperor before marriage, ‘J’ai aimée, mais je suis restée
Mademoiselle de Montijo’? The answer to this is--‘No; the Empress had no
weaknesses. Yes; the Empress always remained the slave of her marital
duties.’” There were, doubtless, times when it seemed as if she thought
of somebody of more consequence than her imperial consort; but her
leanings in this direction appear to have been platonic--the griserie to
have been of very slight duration. “It was with her as with a fire of
straw, which burnt and burnt, making one think and fear that it was
going to destroy everything. Then the individual who flattered himself
with having set light to it was surprised at the flame which had
illuminated and warmed him, and turned away, his only consolation being
the parody of a celebrated sonnet. The Empress was one of those women
who like to be made (platonic) love to. If she flirted, it was without
real peril to her honour and sans rien céder de son intimité.” When she
was a prominent figure in the salon of the Comtesse de Laborde, it is
told of her that she was “très libre d’allures.” Eugénie de Montijo
tutoyait people very freely, and when she ascended the throne she made
any lady who had been a friend in former days “thou” and “thee” her as
of yore.
Much may be forgiven the Empress in consideration of her bringing up.
From the first she knew what opinion the Emperor really entertained of
her--how he saw in her a beautiful woman whom he had marked down as a
pretty plaything, the toy of a week, a month, or mayhap a year. She
quickly undeceived him, and brought him to his senses almost ere he had
taken leave of them. It must not be forgotten that she was thrown among
those who composed the gayest Court in Europe. Money was of no more
value in the Paris of the “sixties” than it is to-day in the
neighbourhood of Monte Carlo, where a sovereign is thought less of than
a fourpenny-piece in London. That was the time when champagne baths were
the vogue, and beauty was worth ten times the market value of
respectability. Those were the days when adventurers flocked to Paris as
to a promised land, when the Emperor’s favourites--the De Mornys, the De
Persignys, et hoc genus omne--got concessions for every “enterprise”
that fertile brains could devise, and when to be “in the swim” was to be
in the way of making your fortune.
At the reveillon du jour de l’an at the Tuileries--December-January,
1853--the Emperor, in accordance with French custom, kissed all the
ladies on the cheek. He approached Mlle. de Montijo with the same
agreeable object; but she drew back, and, curtseying, said to the
astonished Sovereign, “Sire, only my husband shall ever kiss me.” This
rebuff would have chilled most men, but the Emperor took it very
good-humouredly, although such a display of excessive modesty was a new
experience for him. Among those who had tried to put Mlle. de Montijo on
her guard against the Emperor’s compromising attentions was the Duchesse
de Bassano. “Take care,” said this lady; “you are preparing either
regret or remorse for yourself. But do not forget that I warned you.” A
few days later the engagement was known, and Mlle. de Montijo was able
to write to the Duchesse: “I marry Louis _without_ regret and _without_
remorse.”
Towards the close of 1849--when the poor man whom she had seen under
arrest, after the Boulogne fiasco, was in the second year of his
Presidency--a Spanish gipsy told Mlle. de Montijo that she would marry
an Emperor. The señorita knew very well that at the moment there was not
one marriageable Emperor in existence, and she asked the gitana if she
did not mean a King or a Prince. “No,” was the reply, “I mean an
Emperor--an Emperor of a great country.” “Then it must be Souloque,”
said the Comte de Breda, then a French attaché, “for there is no other
Emperor in the matrimonial market, and he would not be particular as to
the number of his wives.”
The proposed marriage was very obnoxious to some of the Emperor’s
Ministers; but when they began to remonstrate, His Majesty cut them
short with that abruptness which characterized him when his wishes were
opposed. “Gentlemen, there is nothing more to say. My marriage with
Mlle. de Montijo is an arranged affair. I am resolved upon it.”
The discomfited Ministers withdrew, but they did not cease to protest.
There were people whose anger led them to say unpleasant things about
both mother and daughter. The former, they asserted, held a very
free-and-easy salon at her hôtel in the Place Vendôme. People gathered
there after the opera, and the “goings-on” were of the liveliest.
“Adventures” of the young lady in former years were fabricated, and
openly discussed. People who stuck at nothing asserted that she had had
a “past.”
One of the numerous malcontents was M. Thiers, who appears to have had a
sardonic kind of humour. “There is nothing to fear from people who are
only tipsy,” he murmured; “but they are to be dreaded when they get
quite drunk.” The French appreciate this description of wit, and the
saying “went the rounds.”
Prince Napoleon, for reasons, and his sister, Princesse Mathilde, for
none, bitterly inveighed against what they regarded as sheer lunacy on
the Emperor’s part. The Prince, who, as long as there was no legitimate
son of the Emperor in existence, stood next in the succession, had some
sort of excuse for denouncing his cousin’s marriage with “a mere femme
du monde,” who had nothing but her good looks to recommend her.
Princesse Mathilde, who had contracted a most unhappy alliance with
Prince Anatole Demidoff, but had been long freed from her tyrant, made
theatrical appeals to the Emperor to abandon his intention. What was to
be done with a man whose infatuation made him cover with kisses
Nieuwerkerke’s little bust of Mlle. de Montijo?
M. Vieil-Castel, a Rochefort born out of his time, marvelled what the
Emperor would do when an Empress was at the head of a Court numbering
among the officials so many men whose lives were the reverse of
edifying. “Perhaps a day would come when Mlle. de Montijo would see
herself allegorically depicted as a Hercules cleansing the Augean
stables.”
The Emperor, however, was supported by a few, among whom was the
celebrated Lamartine. Another of the friendly minority declared that His
Majesty was doing the right thing in marrying a lady whom he loved, and
refusing to bargain for “some scrofulous German Princess with feet as
large as a man’s.”
Before the projected marriage was officially announced, Princesse
Mathilde gave a ball. Among the guests were the Emperor, the Duc de
Morny, the Comtesse de Montijo, and her daughter. The Marquise de
Contades wrote, in later years, of this entertainment: “The Emperor, as
usual, paid the greatest attention to Mlle. de Montijo. For more than an
hour she and the Emperor were engaged in a confidential chat, which no
one had the audacity to interrupt. Mlle. de Montijo bears herself easily
and gracefully. _She and her mother_ both hope _for a marriage, and all
their diplomacy is directed to securing it_. Everybody courts Mlle. de
Montijo, curries favour with her, and seeks her intervention with the
Emperor on their behalf. Ministers make much of her. She goes to all the
fêtes. She is the actual rising sun.”
Mlle. de Montijo, Comtesse de Téba, in November and December, 1852, and
in the following month, monopolized attention in Paris. When she
appeared in her box at the opera (Mauget tells us) people had no ears
for the music, but they had eyes to see the young lady’s peerless
loveliness and graceful bearing. Nothing else mattered. She looked the
Empress. The courrieristes of the papers followed her about; nothing
escaped their lynx eyes. In newspaper argot, she made splendid “copy.”
“Yesterday and to-day the Comtesse de Téba, accompanied by her mother,
the Comtesse de Montijo, visited several shops on the boulevards and in
the Rue Vivienne. The future Empress, being recognized by the crowd, was
most sympathetically greeted. The hearts of all were conciliated by her
simple yet distinguished manners, and by the alms which she bestowed
upon several poor women whom she encountered during her stroll.”
Sharp-tongued ladies like the Marquise de Taisey-Chatenoy (but this
amiable person is not of much account) had an abundance of cutting
things to say of Mlle. de Montijo when she had won the imperial crown.
For example: “The Empress has a great taste for jeux d’esprit--I do not
know why, for it is not by excess of brilliancy in this direction that
she shines.” And M. Irénée Mauget[33] is even more unflattering: “Of
changeable disposition, she lacked judgment and reason. She was
excessively nervous. Very impulsive, she acted under the influence of
good or bad moods, and slighted and wounded many people by her unjust
anger, regretting afterwards the pain she had caused. She was not
untruthful.... Her sudden elevation, although not unforeseen, dazzled
her--stunned her somewhat. Not having been born to occupy a throne, the
transition was too brusque. She lacked proportion, and wanted to appear
too much the Empress. She continued to be very much attached and very
faithful to some of those who had been her intimates in early days, but
she was capricious to most of the others, giving and withholding her
favours with disconcerting fickleness. She was not loved like the
Emperor. When she appeared in public she acknowledged with inimitable
grace the salutations she received, and the French, very gallant, were
won by this charm.... Had she been solidly educated she would have been
capable of exercising the absolute power which she coveted.”
M. Mauget apparently shares M. Rochefort’s unfavourable opinion of the
Comtesse de Montijo, who, simultaneously with her daughter’s advancement
in life, was said to have become miserly. “She made purchases right and
left, and sent the bills to her daughter, sometimes to the Emperor. But
Napoleon, always strongly épris of Eugénie, often shut his eyes at his
mother-in-law’s demands and revelled in the delights of the honeymoon.
Was it the same with Eugénie? We may be permitted to doubt it. What she
loved especially in her husband was the Emperor.”
The Madrid journals waxed enthusiastic over the engagement--_e.g._, the
_España_ (January 26, 1853):
It is a Spanish woman who is going to impart to the throne of a
great nation the lustre of her grace. The Comtesse de Téba, who was
the ornament of our aristocracy, is about to assume the purple of
the Cæsars, and share the destiny of him who is at once the heir of
the man of the century and the conqueror of anarchy.... The lustre
of a throne, however brilliant, will not eclipse the lustre of
Marie Eugénie’s eyes, and the fortune which is crowning her with
all its gifts will not alter the noble serenity of her heart. For
the glory of our country we express the wish, and have the firm
expectation, that the former pearl of Castilian aristocracy will be
the best of French women.
The Duchesse de Dino wrote:
NICE, _January 21, 1853_.
Letters received here from Paris always turn upon the same
subject--the marriage of Louis Napoleon. I read in the newspapers
the surprising speech which he made to the Senate and the
Constituted Bodies [announcing his marriage].
The sister of Mme. de Montijo married Lesseps, formerly a Consul.
There is a little relationship toute gentille! Eugénie has chosen
as her witnesses the Duc d’Ossuna and the Marquis de Bedmar, who
have promised to lead her to the altar. They wanted to marry the
son of Jérôme[34] to Mlle. de Wagram, but he recoiled in view of
the Clary relationship, which he deemed beneath his dignity. That
is flattering to the King of Sweden! What tohu-bohu all this is!
NICE, _January 22, 1853_.
It is decidedly a _love_ marriage which Louis Napoleon is making.
They tell me that Mlle. de Montijo, who was educated at a Paris
pension, is very beautiful, and of high birth _on her father’s
side_. Her mother is the daughter of an English Consul, which
explains the English kind of beauty--not at all Spanish--of the new
_Empress_; for it is not a question of morganatic forms; so, _point
de princesse_. I am charmed. But what a responsibility, at the age
and with the health of the _sposo_, to have a young wife,
beautiful and Southern! And that in the Bonaparte entourage and in
the atmosphere which envelopes it.
Here are some other details, which I have gleaned from my letters
from Paris, which are full of nothing but the marriage.
Mlle. de Montijo’s age is from twenty-five to twenty-seven; of
great beauty, with _auburn_ hair, which she gets from her Irish
mother; she has a bold look. It is said that, as they were playing
cache-cache in the saturnalia of Compiègne, the Emperor discovered
her concealed behind the curtain of a room, where, believing he was
alone with her, he tried to embrace her, and that she pushed him
away, saying, “Not before I am Empress.” Another person who was
similarly concealed professes to have heard these words.
Legitimists and Orleanists are charmed with this matrimonal affair
and with all that it promises.
NICE [_after the marriage_].
The Empress is very beautiful. They say her only imperfection is
that she looks much taller when seated than she actually is when
standing up. She says that, in sacrificing her freedom and her
youth, she gave more than she received; but _she lets herself be
adored_. The ladies have a down-on-the-ground look, but decent. The
decorations of Notre Dame were splendid, but the Cardinals did not
make much of an appearance; in fact, excepting M. de Bonald, not
one of them is of good family.
On returning [from the cathedral to the Palace] the imperial
carriage, which was surmounted by a large crown, was passing under
the archway of the Pavillon de l’Horloge when the horses stopped,
unable to proceed. The surprised coachman whipped them, and then
the obstacle to their progress fell: it was that crown, which was
too high to pass under the arch, and, when it fell, was broken to
atoms. _Ominous!_
NICE,
_February 6, 1853_.
Mme. d’Avenas writes to my daughter that two days before her
marriage the Empress Eugénie went to [the convent of] the
Sacré-Cœur, Paris, in which she had passed some years of her
infancy--Mme. d’Avenas happened to be there also, and thought the
Empress charming, natural, and simple--wanting to see once more all
the souvenirs of her youth, even to the lay-sister who used to wash
her. This visit has had a good effect in the pious world.
Another correspondent wrote to the Duchesse de Dino’s son (February 15),
telling him of the flood of sonnets, pamphlets, and riddles which
inundated the Empress’s salons. “As to me,” this unknown Parisian said,
“the Empress made a conquest of me at Notre Dame--not by her beauty, but
by her dignity and her pious, thoughtful bearing.”
The Maréchale d’Albuféra gave the Duchesse a specimen of the jokes made
about the Empress. The Maréchale, after noting that “the Empress has
blue eyes, and paints her eyebrows and eyelashes black,” asked, “Do you
know why the Empress Eugénie is the best horsewoman in France? Because
she leapt over the barrière du Trône! This is one of the jokes with
which we amuse ourselves here.”
The Duchesse, as a talented diplomatist, noted: “The Empress, _until
now_, decides nothing for herself. She submits everything to the
Emperor, even as to the dress which she ought to wear.”
On December 7, 1860, the Duchesse wrote:
The Empress’s annoyance with Fould arose from two causes. When the
Duc d’Albe came to see him about the funeral of his wife [the
Empress’s sister] Fould replied, “That is a matter for the pompes
funèbres.”
The Empress wanted to sell some of her diamonds for “Peter’s
Pence.” Fould heard of her intention, and told the Emperor of
it.[35]
The foreign Powers did not display particular alacrity in “recognizing”
Napoleon III. There seemed to be much curiosity anent the genealogy of
the Emperor’s future bride, and an elaborate statement was issued by the
Heralds’ College at Paris, informing all whom it might concern that the
lady who was about to become Empress of the French belonged “to the
House of Guzman, whose origin dates back to the earliest times of the
Spanish Monarchy,” several historians asserting that the Guzmans were
the issue of royal blood. “All the branches of this family have played a
distinguished part in history. Amongst them were the Dukes of Medina,
Las Torres, Medina-Sidonia, and Olivares; the Counts of Montijo, of Téba
(or Téva), and of Villaverde; the Marquis de Ardales, the Marquis de la
Algera, etc., grandees of Spain. The Duchesse de Téba, Comtesse de
Montijo, descends from this last branch. This is not the first time this
family has been called to ascend the throne, for in 1633 a daughter of
the eighth Duke of Medina-Sidonia married the King of Portugal, Dom Juan
IV. of Braganza. The Counts of Montijo have the same arms as the Dukes
of Medina-Sidonia; they are near relations, and bear the same name,
which is De Guzman.”