CÆSAR’S WIFE
The Empress, to say it for the thousandth time, was incomparably
beautiful, “divine,” and, like most pretty women--although a Sovereign,
and perhaps because she was a Sovereign--liked people to occupy
themselves about her, liked to be courted. “Although romantic, her
physical sense did not seek emotions which are foreign to those which
the most elementary virtue imposes upon a woman. Her heart was in no
wise desirous of sensations such as those which agitate tender and
sentimental women.” She was neither “tender” nor “sentimental.” She
loved the Emperor. When they were apart, her thoughts were always with
him. Her letters prove it. Once, on her fête-day, she wrote: “This year
again I have passed to-day far from the Emperor. This makes the day
sadder; but I hope to rejoin him very soon.”
A phrase uttered by the Empress provoked some harsh criticism at the
time, and has been, even to this day, quoted against her. It was
ungraciously and unjustly assumed that she had special ideas on virtue.
But there is really nothing in her remark to justify the implication
that she took advantage of that moral freedom which she sometimes
apparently seemed disposed to favour.
It was at the Tuileries that, in the early years of the reign, she was
credited with saying:
One cannot guard young girls too closely, cannot keep them too far
from danger and evil. I constantly watch over them and their
surroundings. As to married women, that is another matter, and I
admit that I am indifferent about them. Their virtues and their
weaknesses are to me perfectly equal: that is their business. They
can look after themselves. And, besides, have they not their
husbands to protect and watch over them?
Brought up in a milieu quite foreign to any Court (that of Spain always
excepted), the Empress, as Sovereign, sometimes lacked that overpowering
gravity which women destined to reign are taught from the cradle. She
believed sincerely, and without arrière pensée, that it was open to her
to enjoy life as she found it. She saw no harm in causing the hearts of
men to beat with sentiments which really only flattered her. She was
curious to read the souls of others; and the adulation bestowed upon her
interested and moved her as a powerful romance would have done. In a
word, she was the popular idol. She knew that she was adored, and,
receiving all this homage in a perfectly passive manner, felt that she
was surrounding herself by friends and devoted admirers, whose sole
object was to serve her and to love her. Besides, she was very fond of
discussion and argument, and consequently sought the society of men
capable, by their esprit, of entertaining her.
Fully aware that a person cannot charm and fascinate people without
taking some little trouble over it, the Empress, before talking to a
politician, a savant, an author, or an artist of any kind, “got up” her
subjects, and made up her mind as to what she must say in order to take
the man captive. Moreover, she was as careful to conquer him by the
attractions of her person as by those of her conversation; and when she
had captured him, when she felt assured that he belonged to her--“when,”
in her own phrase, “she found his homage agreeable and amusing,” when
she knew that she had stirred his heart, then, and only then, she
checked the pretty poem or the half-finished sketch, and wrote with her
own fair hand at the bottom of the page which she had read the one word
“Fin!” All this was, no doubt, imprudent, and not in conformity with the
gravity which ought to have been hers: it may even have been cruel; but
what pretty (and virtuous) woman will rise to blame the Empress? What
pretty (and virtuous) woman will dare to say that she has never acted in
the same way in the drawing-rooms which she frequents? And what man, not
entirely virtuous, but amoureux, has not been the victim of similar
feminine perfidies? “Le péché veniel des unes, les bourgeoises;
deviendrait-il le péché mortel des autres, les reines?” Shall we be
wrong in answering the question in the negative?
From the outset the Empress displayed no little fickleness, now
lavishing attentions upon those who pleased her, then suddenly
dismissing them with a word or a gesture, and henceforth ignoring them.
She appeared to act upon uncontrollable impulses, the most glaring
temperamental defect in her otherwise generous nature. It was one of the
“defects of her qualities,” calling less for censure than for record in
an impartial narrative. With all this, however, the Empress was loyal
and susceptible of great devotion to her friends, and one sought without
finding anything approaching egotism or vaingloriousness in her many
inconsistencies. When she gave her hand to a woman or a man she was
perfectly sincere, and when she sealed a friendship, or an attachment,
with some signal mark of her approbation, she did so in all good faith
and in all honour. The Emperor deplored, and with reason, the
waywardness displayed by his consort in the choice of her friends, and
had often to allay the bitter enmities and discontent which she
heedlessly, and perhaps unconsciously, aroused.
The cynical saying of François I., “Souvent femme varie,” might have
been applied to the Empress, who was as fickle in her sensations as in
her sentiments. She was a Spaniard, and to that fact may be attributed
her somewhat eccentric manner. Her character was truly remarkable; she
took all sorts of fancies into her head: was very romantic even while
remaining practical, prosaic, and mistress of herself. In her romantic
disposition the Empress, strange to say, found a certain strength, as
letters written by her in the first year of her marriage confirm. One of
these epistles may be cited in proof of this view of her character.
The Empress, much pressed by Mme. de M., one of the leading members of
the Legitimist party, to obtain for her husband a diplomatic post, did
not rest until she had gratified the applicant’s wishes. It should not
be forgotten that the Emperor always cherished the idea of rallying to
his dynasty the notabilities of the Faubourg St. Germain, and showed
every courtesy to those Legitimists who attended the Court of the
Tuileries. It is doubtful if the Empress seconded his efforts in this
direction, but in the matter alluded to she certainly laid herself out
to do a kindly action.
“Mme. de M.,” wrote the Empress to the Emperor, “wants the vacancy at
The Hague for her husband, and I much wish him to have it.” She added,
as one who was worried by repeated applications of this kind: “Comme ça
on me laisserait tranquille!”
A week afterwards the Empress wrote: “I saw Mme. de M. on Sunday, and
she seemed perfectly satisfied.”
Writing immediately afterwards about another lady--also one of the
Royalist group--for whom she had done something, Her Majesty said: “As
to Mme. de C., up to now she hasn’t uttered a word of thanks to me. If
you should see her--especially if you should see her husband--say that
he does not owe his post entirely to his personal merits. As to
gratitude, I have my own opinion about that; and, as I never expect any,
I am never disappointed.”
These letters reveal a melancholy philosophy, throwing much light upon
the Emperor’s entourage, and showing that, if the Sovereigns did their
utmost to conciliate members of all parties, they were too often
rewarded only with ingratitude by those on whom they had bestowed
favours, or to whom they had accorded high positions in the public
service.
That the Empress, strong in her own virtue, should have been grievously
pained, and sometimes exasperated, by her inflammatory consort’s
peccadilloes is not very surprising. That there were “scenes” was but
natural. It was, then, all the more to her credit that in public she
invariably showed the Emperor the greatest deference; even in her own
apartments, if he appeared, as he sometimes did, when the Empress was
entertaining friends, she would rise directly he entered the room, and
make him a profound reverence. At one time, too, she sought to amuse the
Emperor in a variety of ways, and when one or other of her suite
mustered up sufficient courage to repeat to her the rumours and the
cancans of the hour, Her Majesty would remark: “Really, they blame us
for amusing ourselves at the Tuileries! Surely the very least I can do
is to give some distraction to the poor Emperor (who is ennuyé all day
by politics), and show him some pretty women!”
It need hardly be said that the observation, coupled with what the
Empress had previously said touching the conjugal fidelity of women
generally, did not tend to diminish the reputation for légèreté which
she had acquired even before her accession to the throne. This
frivolity, although perhaps it was more apparent than real, was made the
most of by certain ladies, and particularly by the Princesse de
Metternich.
That there were evil counsellors among his consort’s bosom friends none
knew better than the Emperor, who said to her:
You admit to your most intimate friendship a heap of people who do
not wish either of us any good, and who are no better than spies.
You tell them a thousand things without thinking of what you are
saying. Nigra [he was the Italian Ambassador], Metternich, and the
rest only “spoon” you to get your secrets out of you! You may take
it as certain that every word you say to them, or in their
hearing, finds its way to Turin or Vienna. You place too much
reliance in them, and in return for your confidence they are for
ever doing their best to “pump” you.
Did not events prove that the Emperor was right?
Quite early in the reign the Empress became a dissatisfied and
disappointed woman. Many untoward circumstances combined to produce,
with welcome intervals, a disorganization of the family life at the
Tuileries, or wherever the Court happened to be. There were, too, those
famous charades, remarkable for the lavish display of feminine charms,
and resulting in much hostile criticism at second-hand. This
entertainment was referred to by the Empress in a letter written by her
to the Emperor (July 13, 1860):
I thank you for your welcome letter. I am much better now than I
was a few days ago. When I left Fontainebleau I felt ill both in
mind and body, having been feverish, and suffering from an
irritation of the chest which compelled me on two successive days
to go to bed soon after I was up. The weather and the calm of St.
Cloud have worked wonders for me, and you will find me in good
health and delighted to see you.
Your philosophic reflections are very beautiful; the thing is to
put them in practice. I am very weak against that malice which is
not based upon _hatred_. When, by chance, I find in my way people
endeavouring to make mischief out of nothing, and tearing
reputations to tatters for lack of something better to do, I feel
inexpressibly sad, because I say to myself: “One must be very
wicked to find pleasure in vexing and injuring those with whom one
shakes hands, for not only do the blows show, but defiance takes
the place of all other sentiments, and, as the anonymous is masked
by friendship, we distrust people without knowing why.” These are
the reasons why you found me so sad lately at Fontainebleau.
That innocent charade, unveiled by the papers, was described in a
manner which shows it to have been supplied by somebody who was
present at the performance, and who got it published either out of
malice or to satisfy people’s curiosity. It must have been
published by a friend, or, at least, by a guest, and this is one of
those things to which I cannot get accustomed. I shall always be
strong against my enemies; I cannot say I shall ever be so against
my friends.
If those who seek to deprive us of the little time that we have for
enjoying the air and for liberty knew how precious this time is to
those who are condemned to the preoccupations of the present and
fears for the future, they would leave us this oasis, where we try
to forget that we must march, always march, with the passions of
some and the fears of others.
I have written you this long letter to explain to you that the
little tear in the corner of my eye has not even dropped. My eight
pages are sprinkled with orthographical blunders, which give
originality to my letter, and prove that when I write to you I
forget myself.
Does not this letter show the Empress at her best?
Mlle. de Montijo, wrote M. de Mazade in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_
shortly after her engagement, “impressed one by a sort of virile grace,
which might easily have made her a heroine of romance, and before
assuming the imperial diadem she proudly wore that crown of hair whose
colour a Venetian painter would have loved.”
The relations which existed between the Emperor and Empress used to be
discussed in the most unreserved fashion, not only in Paris clubs and
salons, but in many London circles. All manner of stories were told
about their Majesties. Some strong sidelights are thrown upon the lives
of the imperial couple by Mme. Carette, in her entertaining “Souvenirs.”
If that estimable woman be accurate (and as she was “reader” to the
Empress for several years, she should be, and, I have been recently
informed, is, a competent witness), the trouble began some eight years
after the marriage, by which time “the Empress had known more than one
sadness.”
“The Emperor,” says Mme. Carette, whose resemblance to the Empress seems
to have been very marked, “led away by his old habits of pleasure, by
the easy manners of some of those by whom he was surrounded, was not
invariably mindful of his consort’s feelings as Sovereign and wife. The
Empress, in all the splendour of her youth and beauty, had made
acquaintance with the subtle poison which corrupts all which is most
delicate in woman’s heart. After distractions, some of which had a
regrettable notoriety, the Emperor, who, like many men, attached no
importance to his fleeting liaisons, appeared to be always surprised
that he had wounded his wife’s feelings at a time when she occupied the
largest place in his life. Sisterly friendship had supported the Empress
in these trying experiences. The Duchesse d’Albe, all sweetness and
tenderness, consoled her sister, whose ardent nature increased her
sufferings tenfold. She helped the Empress to reconcile herself to her
hours of trouble and bitterness and to find strength to pardon [the
Emperor]. When the Duchesse d’Albe died, the Empress felt for the first
time the loneliness which grandeur brings with it. She remained alone
with her grief, with nothing to distract her, having no courage to
fulfil her worldly duties. Her health suffered greatly, and the doctors
urged the Emperor to persuade her to travel in order to remove the
painful strain which she was enduring. The Empress accordingly left on a
visit to Scotland, where she remained a few weeks.[36] She returned to
Paris much improved in health, ready to take up the duties of her
position, but she had been irremediably touched by her melancholy
situation. From that time dated a profound change in her tastes, as well
as in her habits. Her youthfulness seemed to have vanished, and under
the charming features of the woman ripened by sorrow appeared the
Sovereign whom one had not hitherto seen.”
When Napoleon III. was writing his “Life of Cæsar,” and casting
ambitious glances at a chair in the Academy, a poet wrote a few verses
on the Emperor’s work, referring to him as the “greatest Cæsar of these
later years.” In return for this compliment the Emperor sent his
panegyrist a diamond ring and an invitation to call at the Tuileries.
The Emperor received him very graciously, and, after some casual talk,
asked him if he were married. “No, sire,” was the reply. “Why don’t you
marry? Would you marry a lady who is young, beautiful, of ardent
disposition, and with a handsome dowry, if you met such a one who was
willing to have you?” The young man began to wonder if he was in, not
the Palace of the Tuileries, of the glories of which he had heard and
read so much, but in Aladdin’s cave. But, though dazed at the prospect,
he speedily recovered himself, and replied: “Yes, sire, I should be only
too happy.” “Well, then,” said the Emperor, “come here to-morrow night
at ten o’clock, and I will present you to her.”
At the appointed time the poet, still rather fancying that he was
dreaming, entered the Palace, and was immediately ushered into the
Emperor’s cabinet. Napoleon III. was in morning dress; he donned a large
cloak and a hat which concealed his identity, and led the poet to a side
door. A carriage was waiting, and in it they were driven to a bijou
villa which stood in spacious grounds in a retired part of Paris.
“My dear Marie,” said the Emperor to the beautiful woman, scarcely more
than a girl just out of her teens, “allow me to present my friend,
Monsieur ----, who comes as a suitor for your hand.” With this the
Emperor retired, and was seen no more!
The poet found the lady quite willing to accept his wooing, and, knowing
that the imperial favour depended upon his discretion, did not make any
inquiries as to madame’s history. A few weeks later they were quietly
married, and the husband found that his bride’s dowry was the handsome
sum of £100,000. He was never again invited to the Tuileries, nor did he
ever have another interview with the Emperor. To his surprise, one
morning he received an appointment in the Diplomatic Service in a
distant country. Needless to say, he accepted the post, and resided,
with his wife, at the scene of his labours until his death more than a
quarter of a century ago. His widow returned to Paris and married a
Russian noble. When the news of the poet-diplomatist’s death reached
Paris, General Fleury, who knew the faiblesses of Napoleon III. better
than most men, pleasantly remarked: “Ah! he was a lucky fellow to get
such a wife; but it was hard luck for the Emperor to have to pay such a
price to get rid of so charming an encumbrance!”
Mlle. de Montijo had not been an Empress many weeks before her greatness
and the luxe by which she was surrounded began to be distasteful. “She
had never loved the Emperor. Her heart remained faithful to the Marquis
d’Alcanises, her former fiancé. The Marquise de Bedmar, one of Her
Majesty’s Spanish friends, told me that the Empress said to her, on the
eve of the wedding: ‘If Alcanises came to fetch me, I would go away with
him!’ But Alcanises never came, and, some years later, when he was the
Duc de Sesto, married the widow of the Duc de Morny.”[37]
The strict etiquette which the Emperor insisted should be observed
weighed upon the lady who had hitherto revelled in complete
independence, while she was exasperated at the surveillance of the
Palace ladies, even the domestics. This irritation disappeared as if by
magic after she and her consort had visited Queen Victoria and the
Prince Consort, and seen how things were done at the model English
Court. How bored she was she showed very plainly in a letter written to
one of the friends of the old days, begging to be “thou’d” as in former
times: “Je suis seule dans mon palais, et très chagrinée des bouderies
[sulkiness] que je sens autour de moi.”
A collection of what M. Mauget describes as “Notes of a Member of the
Imperial Police” provides curious reading:
_March 8, 1853._
The Comtesse de Montijo is still residing in Paris, and it is said
that her influence is by no means so trifling as some have believed
it to be. At the last soirée M. Fould[38] was very assiduous in his
attentions to her. That is not surprising when one recalls the
intrigante of the salon at Madrid.
_March 24, 1853._
Mme. de Montijo has left [Paris] on very bad terms with the august
occupants of the Tuileries.
The _Journal d’Indre-et-Loire_ reports the arrival at Tours of the
Comtesse de Montijo, _accompanied by M. Mérimée_.
Everybody knows the amount of scandal talked at Paris concerning
the former relations of the author of “Colomba” and the Comtesse de
Montijo.
The same people who discuss the Comtesse also talk a great deal
about the Empress. People maliciously pretend to pity her. They say
she lives in a state of constraint which afflicts her all the more
because it is such a great contrast to the freedom she enjoyed
before her unexpected elevation. It is said that letters addressed
to her are first taken to the Emperor, who, when replies are sent,
himself dictates the answers, without the Empress being informed
either that anyone has written to her, or that someone has answered
the letters in her name. This manner of acting could not last long
without her becoming aware of it, and she has exhibited the
greatest irritation. Very lively scenes between the Emperor and his
wife have taken place. Those who know her imperious character say
they would not be surprised if the Empress, abandoning all her
grandeurs, fled to Belgium or to England.
_March 25, 1853._
It is asserted that if the Empress’s mother left Paris several days
ago it was because she had received a positive order to do so from
the Emperor, who had been informed of the scandalous conduct, past
and present, of his mother-in-law. The Empress is said to have been
greatly annoyed at the compulsory departure of her mother. There
had been a women’s quarrel; Princesse Mathilde said recently: “If
the Emperor had wanted an Impératrice mère, he would have sought
one elsewhere.”
_April 1._
The Empress’s condition is the subject of much sympathy. To
profound ennui has succeeded an intense melancholy.
_April 5._
People continue to describe the Empress as being tired of
everything. She cannot forget the complete freedom she enjoyed
before her marriage. Sometimes she allows herself to play childish
tricks upon the Emperor. The other day, when they were walking
together in the garden, the Emperor stooped to examine some plants.
The Empress thought it amusing to push him from behind, so that he
fell on all fours.
_April 20._
It is believed that the Empress is enceinte.
_May 5._
The Duchesse d’Albe is coming to Paris. It is stated that the
Comtesse de Montijo wished to accompany her, but, by a special
order, the Emperor has forbidden her to do so.
_May 25._
Yesterday the Emperor went out without the Empress. The Empress is
still ailing, and people continue to talk about it. Her sufferings
are more mental than physical. She cannot accustom herself to the
etiquette imposed upon her by the Emperor. He is suspicious and
severe to excess. At the least infraction by the Empress of the
rules imposed upon her she is reminded of it with a frigidity
which, to her, is worse than harshness.
When the Emperor sees that some lady has the particular confidence
of the Empress, he hastens to get rid of her. This is what happened
to Mme. Aguado. This dame d’honneur is greatly beloved by the
Empress, and the two often talk in Spanish. The Emperor does not
know that language, so he gave Mme. Aguado her congé. The Empress’s
supplications had no effect upon the Emperor. This has deeply
wounded her. It is said to have been one of the causes of the
fausses couches.
_May 28._
The Empress always occasions much talk. The following was said
yesterday à propos of the announcements published by the _Moniteur_
concerning Her Majesty’s privileges:
The Empress is of a stubborn, scoffing disposition, which adapts
itself with difficulty to all the fictions of her imperial
existence. Some are privileged to arouse her spirit of fun. She
laughed heartily when she was informed of M. de Persigny’s report
and the imperial decree regulating her privileges, and it was with
a gaiety ill according with the event that she signed the
documents. As she scribbled her name she turned towards the Emperor
with the remark: “You see, sire, that I somewhat imitate your Corps
Législatif--I sign blindly.”
In the years that were before Chislehurst the name “Empress Eugénie”
signified the most radiant incarnation of beauty under which a woman
could appear in order to dazzle, to touch and captivate, assemblies of
men; it signified generosity of heart, inexhaustible charity, virtue,
modest serenity in bearing the weight of fortune’s favours, an elevated
intelligence open to the comprehension of all great things, a free and
tolerant mind, a sweet and pitying piety. It was no secret that she was
pleased by heroic deeds, but, as Providence had not as yet afflicted her
with the heaviest trials which the human heart can bear, she was not
thoroughly known. To-day the same name signifies patriotism even unto
sacrifice, chivalrous abnegation, courage, disinterestedness unexampled
in history, dignity supreme in misfortune, resignation to unhappiness,
and never-failing patience in the woes and duties of exile.
This double character of her destiny has stamped upon the physiognomy
and the person of the Empress a pathetic expression which strikes those
who have not seen her often of late years. It is with a tender and
sympathetic respect that one contemplates the widow of Napoleon III. and
mother of the Prince Imperial, enveloped in sombre vestments, but, in
the winter of her days, more beautiful than ever, if the supreme
expression of beauty is that of the ideal. She evokes in our imagination
the picture of Marie Stuart at Holyrood or on the banks of Lochleven.
The look of melancholy, which has become a second nature, cannot efface
the sweetness and charm which will be always hers. It is her tranquil
and touching majesty which reveals the
[Illustration:
Lord Kitchener.
The Hon. Charlotte Knollys. The King of Denmark. King Edward.
Queen Alexandra. The Empress. Princess Beatrice of Coburg.
THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE ON BOARD THE ROYAL YACHT, AUGUST, 1902, AT THE
REVIEW OF THE FLEET BY KING EDWARD.
_From a Photograph by J. Russell & Sons, Baker Street, London,
Photographers to H.M. the King.
Specially prepared by Messrs. Russell for this work (1911)._
_To face p. 64._]
woman beneath the Sovereign, the tenderness of the heart under the
height of the rank; but there is, besides, the victorious prestige
conferred upon her by misfortune heroically borne. That power of
attraction which would have made Napoleon I. say of her as he said of
Joséphine, “I win the battles, she wins the hearts,” is now shown afresh
by the emotion which is aroused as we gaze upon her venerable figure.
“Dans toute grande chose il s’est toujours rencontré une femme,” said
Lamartine; and there will be found in history certain epochs--the most
brilliant ones--which are incarnated for posterity in a feminine
personality. The Empress represents, in the most fascinating guise, the
greatness of one or other of those epochs--the noble impulses, the
generous inspirations, the heroisms, the radiant dawns, and the
grandiose twilights. Such women impress their personality upon their
contemporaries by their witchery, for they are beautiful even to
idealism. In their souls they are still more perfect; they achieve
conquest by their suffering, for, in order that they may be quite
complete in all things, misfortune touches their brow with its black
wing. And behold them become, for all men to remember, the eternal
radiance, the eternal compassion, of history, of poetry, of legend.
In the sixteenth century such a personality as is here depicted was
called Marie Stuart; in the seventeenth, Henrietta Maria, daughter of
Henri Quatre, and wife of Charles I.; in the eighteenth, Marie
Antoinette. With an incontestable moral superiority over all these, the
Empress Marie Eugénie lengthens this list by the purity of her name, and
will remain the touching symbol of that part of the history of France
known as the Second Empire.
Writing one day to Napoleon III., the Empress said: “My life is
finished, but I live again in my son, and I believe I shall find the
truest happiness in that which comes into my heart from his.” Never was
the maternal sentiment more beautifully expressed than in those pathetic
words. Into the heart of this mother entered many joys and ineffable
happiness. Who, looking upon that son of Cæsar, whose visage had all the
sweetness of his mother’s united to the virility of his father’s, could
fail to have believed that he, too, would be the hero of a new and great
chapter of history? Who was not tempted to apply to him the phrase of
Virgil: “Tu Marcellus eris”? They had no presentiment of the invasion,
the defeats, the captivity, the vanishing of the father, the tragedy in
the mealie-fields.
In the broad ways of the once beleaguered city there reappears ever and
anon the silhouette of the woman who aforetime filled it with her grace,
her splendid beauty, her charity, and her solicitude.
Her letters to the Emperor before their marriage displayed so much more
literary skill than Mlle. Eugénie de Montijo was supposed to possess
that ill-natured people asserted they were written by that attached
friend of the Montijos, Prosper Mérimée. This is to charitably suppose
that Napoleon III. invited his friends to peruse the letters addressed
to him by “the beautiful Spaniard” during the period of his ardent
wooing--a course which would have been entirely foreign to his loyal
nature. The Emperor probably destroyed his fiancée’s letters; if not,
they must be among the mass of papers preserved at Farnborough Hill, to
remain unpublished until the expiration of fifty years after the
Empress’s death.
From her own chaplet of memories I cull these few blossoms:
_Neither the mother nor the child is responsible for the faults of
the father._
_We should practise a policy of ideas, not of expedients._
_Is it not too absurd to say that on September 4 (1870) I was
afraid? What woman, what Sovereign, seeing her husband betrayed by
fate, a prisoner; her son wandering about, perhaps dead; her
country invaded and devastated; her crown lost--who would have
thought at such a moment of her personal security, and who would
not have preferred death a hundred times to so many sorrows?_
_I have an absolute confidence in the power of truth. I summon with
my whole strength all that can hasten its coming. It will
appear--it appears already. Calumnies arise from time to time, like
the unhealthy vegetation of the tropics; but the sun kills the one,
the light of truth destroys the others, and their ephemeral and
evil life leaves no traces._
_I cannot die. And God, in His clemency, will give me a hundred
years of life._
_We must not destroy the legends which the peoples weave round
their Sovereigns._
_I am left alone, the sole remnant of a shipwreck, which proves how
fragile and vain are the grandeurs of this world._
_I have lived; I have been. I wish to be nothing, not even a
memory. I am the Past. I live, but am no more; a shadow, a phantom,
a walking sorrow.... I have renounced the future. I live in my
youth, in my past. And all the rest is shade, obscure shade. I am
like these trees, voyez-vous. They also, like me, live on the
memory of their past beauty. But they look forward to the
spring-time. I do not--I have nothing more to expect. My sad winter
even has come to an end._
_Pray and weep with me. My sister is dead._
_It is sad that after so many sorrows they will not let me have
that calm which I need so much._
_I firmly believe that they that are gone are happier than we._ (In
a telegram to Monsignor Goddard on the death of his sister.)
(She had been asked at Chislehurst why, although so many had offered to
share her misfortunes, she had accepted the devotion of only one or two
persons. And she answered:)
_Quand on est au milieu de la tempête, et qu’avec soi on traine la
foudre, il ne faut pas laisser les autres vous rejoindre. (When you
are in the midst of the storm, and dragging the thunder in your
wake, you must not let others be exposed to it.)_
_In leaving to others the honour of the defence of France in 1870,
I obeyed a sentiment of personal abnegation. I did not wish to
divide the country when the enemy might at any moment have entered
by the breach opened to it by our internal dissensions._
_I seek peace and forgetfulness._
_I know how to get rid of them [General Fleury and M. Emile
Ollivier], and to deliver the Emperor from them._
_Doctors try to cure the body before the soul; but that is
impossible._
_Your philosophical reflections are very beautiful; the thing is to
put them in practice._
_One must be very wicked to wound the feelings of those who extend
their hands in friendship._
The Empress had a protégée whose relatives were anxious that she should
marry a Duke, and they entreated Her Majesty to induce the young lady to
accept the suitor. This the Empress declined to do. “Greatness is
purchased too dearly,” she said, “and so I will not persuade Mlle. ----
to enter into this alliance.”
There are etymological purists who have asserted that Her Majesty’s
French is not absolutely flawless; but this is a reproach to which other
august personages are subject. That the Empress’s native Spanish colours
her pronunciation of certain French words, she herself would probably be
the first to admit. Similarly, the Emperor’s German education accounted
for his amusing mispronunciation of some French words. Did he not, for
example, invariably address his consort as “_U_genie”? And is not
Bismarck credited with having once said to him, with well-concealed
sarcasm: “I have never heard French spoken as your Majesty speaks it”?
In the opinion of that master of phrases, a Sovereign’s education was
complete if he knew French thoroughly and could ride well. Napoleon III.
had a perfect seat on horseback--so good, indeed, that it was said of
him that he only looked a real Emperor when he was mounted; and none but
Bismarck would have ventured to criticize his pronunciation.