The Empress Eugénie

Table Of Contents

PAGE

I. Her Marriage 27

II. Her Private Life 41

Preface

, A VERY significant fact marks the present time : a large proportion of the reading pubhc — or rather of the pubUc who knows how to read — has lost its interest in the novel, and is turning with curiosity towards history, whether that history borrows its interest from the apparent triviality of the chronicle, or from the bare facts of documents.

Of all contemporary situations, incontestably those which have the greatest charm, and which captivate the observer most completely, are those connected with the reign of Napoleon III. ; and they thrill us all the more because of the complete silence which, until to-day, has enveloped the affairs of the Empire. This silence appears to have been broken. The time of the Empire seems far distant. But many who witnessed or were actors in those brilliant scenes are still living, and memoirs, souvenirs, sketches, anecdotes, are now being offered to the legitimate curiosity of the eager public.

The characteristic features of the Empire are growing more definite, and the public turns to this past epoch so little known, as if drawn thither by a restless spirit of inquiry. The Empire has crumbled, and silence — I repeat — the great silence of death, has rested upon its memory. Like a fabulous meteor, during a period of almost twenty years, it threw a glamour over France, dazzling the eyes and the minds of men, and with a furnace blast, with the titanic upheaval of an earthquake, it has been scattered to the four winds, it has disappeared in the darkness, and this colossal meteor has not even, like a shooting star, left in the sky a shining streak of light.

Why this silence, why this void .<* This question is easily answered. Those who have the right to speak, those who could speak with authority of this period, are silent, and deliberately so.

The Emperor has inspired deep devotion and sincere affection. The men who loved him, faithful to his memory, would think that they were guilty of treachery if they gave to the public, that is to say, to the hatred and anger of some, to the scepticism or raillery of others, his strange personality. On the other hand, those who are interested in the Empire, whether novelists or historians, lack the data upon which to build an exact account, so that the present generation looks upon the twenty years of the reign of Napoleon III. as upon a great void.

An author, M. Emile Zola, however, has appeared upon the scene, who, with a talent bordering on genius, has attempted, not only to reconstruct in his works the social life which was the fashion under the Second Empire, but also the character of the different classes of that time. This man has failed. His novels are in no sense a reflection of the period of the Empire. They reveal neither its grandeur, nor its follies, nor its worldliness, nor its love affairs, all of which gave it a peculiar aspect. They lO PREFACE.

contain no true echo of the hfe at that time, and in their plebeian solemnity or their popular majesty, they offer only indistinct and very stereotyped outlines of the people and customs of the past. His ignorance of men and women shows itself in every page of his works, and they are without that social movement which the reader to-day expects to find in any work which treats of the Second Empire.

To throw a few clods of earth into this chasm which yawns between us and this period, and so help to fill it, has seemed to me a task worth undertaking. Others will doubtless come after me who will do it better. If the pages which I offer to the public to - day have any merit, this merit, if I may be allowed to say so, lies entirely in their veracity, in the scrupulous exactness of the facts, serious or frivolous, which they relate. They have been communicated to me by former favourites at the Tuileries, known or unknown colleagues of Napoleon ; they are strewn with anecdotes and with authentic facts not heretofore published ; they ai'e composed from notes on the intimacies of the Tuileries, written by impartial hands, and which, taken together with the more important facts of my narrative, are worthy of notice. In what concerns history or pohtics no source, indeed, should be neglected, and the sketch of men in their intimate relations as well as the simple statement of facts, often contains much that is of interest. The Empress Eugenie and the Emperor Napoleon are strangely unknown to our generation. The Empress especially is looked upon by us moderns, as a light vapour which one day was lit up by the sun, and which one night disappeared in a thunder-storm. Those who on the day of her downfall were ten years old, and who to-day are thirty, represent her as a beautiful coquette, as a picture of a frivolous woman in bright and showy colours. The Empress was not only what she is made out to be by writers who either praise or blame her unduly, but she was something more. Twenty years have elapsed since she left France ; twenty years have surrounded her, if not with peace, at least with the calm of history. The time has come to speak. She who was adored is an exile ; she who was light-hearted has become austere. Traditions have arisen about her, and in the midst of these the Empress looms uncertain as a phantom. She is far removed from the worldliness and pomp which were formerly hers ; she is far from the intrigues of love and politics with which she amused herself ; far from the foolish men and women who surrounded her, and who crowded into the Tuileries as if it were a fertile field of golden grain, as if it were an Eden in which life was happier, which was full of dreams, free from cares and stormy morrows. The men and women are far distant who used to come towards her laughing, dancing, singing, making merry, and praising her to the stars. The stars are hidden. Those which shone in the firmament in honour of Caesar and his companion no longer shine. The time of destruction and mourning has come, and we say in the sad, sweet words of the poet, — " Oil sont les neiges d'antan ? "

Pierre de Lano.

Introduction

The preceding pages were written at the time when I pubhshed in the Figaro a few extracts from the present volume on the Empress Eugenie. As I then offered to my readers in support of my statements unpubUshed documents, and letters from either ministers or ambassadors, or from members of the imperial family who habitually surrounded Napoleon III. and his wife, I had reason to believe that my narrative would be received without protest, and that no voice would be raised in an attempt to weaken the force of my disclosures. I was wrong, (a newspaper, the Gaulois, answered eachfof my arguments — containing, I will not say an attack on the Empress, but proofs of her bad influence on the politics of the Empire, and on the customs of the court — by an article which made a painful effort to restore, in favour of the fallen sovereign, false traditions which must crumble away before history.

This defence, whose false simplicity could only have been inspired by some deep-laid plot, having been brought to my notice, I did not think worth while to answer, preferring to wait for the freedom of a book to expose its worthlessness to the public.

I must add that this attack upon me was very unskilful : and those who made it will doubtless regret having done so.

It was not my intention to write a volume on the Empress Eugenie. I meant to confine my narrative to a few pages of a pamphlet, and, with a feeling of pity, to consign to darkness and silence U^ertain historical facts which bear directly on the wife of Napoleon III., and the responsibility of which, in spite of her flatterers, rests entirely on herself.

The attack of the Gaulois prevents me from remaining longer silent, and compels me to state the facts, whether good or bad, in regard to the Empress Eugenie. After all, does she not belong to history t

Why dissemble, or why destroy, by an imposed silence, the tie which binds her to the destinies of France ? Why set aside, in what concerns her, the impartial judgment of time, from which the queens who have preceded her at the Tuileries have not been exempt ?

The Empress has been cruelly criticised in her public life, as well as in her affections of wife and mother. Doubtless this is true. But is this a reason for protecting her from facing the truth, even in her sorrow, even in her fall } I think not.

/Has not the war of 1 870, which she instigated, left in its wake wives and mothers whose grief is great and whose memories are drowned in tears } And can there be found, in any part of the world, do we find here, a writer to bemoan in poetry or prose the sorrow of these women who, albeit they were not empresses, are no less worthy of our sympathy and of our solicitude }

I realise all the folly of such a discussion ; so I will leave it, and taking up one by one the articles in the Ganlois, I will answer them.

Under date of the 22d of September, 1890, with this heading, " The truth in regard to the departure of the Prince Imperial for Zululand," the Gaidois gives us an account of an interview which the prince had with his mother a few days before his departure. This interview is purely imaginary, and might be a chapter of a most romantic novel. The prince had but one desire, to get away from this mother who did not understand him, to cut loose from her absurd guardianship, which made him ridiculous in the eyes of the young men of his age and of his world, and to go across the sea to win that independence which was denied to him at home. In need of affection, in need of money, robbed even of an inheritance which had come to him from a relative, watched and lectured like a naughty child — he had a horror of his home, and he preferred to risk his future in a doubtful adventure, rather than spend his youth, full of life, intelligence, and goodness, in petty cavilling with the Empress.

These are the facts. They are well known by all those who were near the Prince Imperial, and those who deny them try to deceive

France, where the prince was loved, — " Le petit Prince," as he was called, — and falsify history, which asks for facts and not fables.

On the 4th of October, 1890, under the title, " The fable of Yung and its sequence at the Court of Napoleon III.," the Gatdois, taking up the article which I had just published in the Figaro, reproduces the same facts which had been previously set forth by me. But, distorting my account and giving a different version of it, it places the adventure of Home in i860, in order to prove its case and to represent that the Empress asked the celebrated medium to allow her to press the hand of her dead sister, the Duchesse d'Albe.

Moreover, the appearance of Home and not Yung at the Tuileries was in 1857, ^^d 3-S at that time the Duchesse d'Albe was still living, the Empress could not have made the demand in question, of the spirits.

The letters which I have published on this subject and which date from September, 1857, and which are all written by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, give abundant proof of the veracity of my statements, and demonstrate, moreover, that this American owed his success at court entirely to the Empress. Farther on the same paper, in relating the discomfiture of Home, taken at Biarritz in flagrante delicto for jugglery, informs us that the Emperor himself helped his discomfiture. But Napoleon III. that very evening was at Stuttgart, holding the famous interview with the Emperor of Russia. He could not at the same time be taking Home to task at Biarritz. A letter from M. Rothan, who was then the private secretary of the French legation at Stuttgart — the very one from which I quote in this book — leaves no , doubt as to the correctness of my statements. On the 22d of October, 1890, the Gaulois, under the head of " M. Emile Ollivier at the Tuileries," wrote the following lines which concerned me personally, since I was the only person at that time who had given to the public any account of the Second Empire. " Apart from facts made incontestable by their consequences, by the archives which remain to us, how can we accredit any absolute certainty to historical traditions, when we see contemporary events travestied with a skill and talent which would make us doubt truth itself ? "

A man must certainly possess great audacity to make such an attack on an author, after having himself published the historic untruths to which I have just referred.

I would like to call the attention of the Gaiclois to the fact that I claim neither skill nor talent in composing my narrative, — he used these words in a derogatory sense, — but that I am satisfied to remain independent so as to retain the right to be impartial.

I would also like to call the attention of my critic to the fact that history wants facts and is not made up of cuttings from newspapers, nor of pretty fables composed to give pleasure to those who have played an important public role in life. Moreover, I shall be very curious to see how the Gaulois will undertake to invalidate, after this, the letters of personages named below, and to persist in its denunciations, as in its affected goodwill. But I should never get through with this paper if I were obliged to expose all its errors. I will only mention one more incident before closing a controversy which has been thrust upon me.

We hear a great deal of the charity, of the generosity, of the Empress, and of her constant maternal solicitude for those who served her at the time of her power, and who have since been overcome by poverty, even by want.

Now, would the reader like to know the ex- ,tent of this solicitude, of this generosity, of this charity, which, in any case, whether false or real, so far as it has to do with strangers, might well have been expended on the poor little Prince Imperial 1 Read, then, the following letters, which came into my hands at the time when I published a few extracts from this book. They will determine the reader's opinion, without any necessity for a long commentary.

Sir : — Having formerly been in the employ of the Emperor, I always read with interest whatever bears on the events which occurred at the Tuileries. I will tell you at once, without any mental reservation, that the Empress Eugenie can never be sufficiently punished for the wrong she has done to this country, as well as to her old servants, to whom she has never given a thought.

She still has, however, sufficient wealth to do something, at least, for those who served the Emperor with so much devotion ; but no, not a thought, not a memoryeven, has she for them. Yes, we believed in and loved the Emperor and the Prince Imperial, but we were sure we would be forgotten by the Empress, as we have been. Since 1870, a small capital, given with kind feeling, could have made long since an income which might have relieved a few unfortunate and faithful servants.

Sir: — Doubtless the Empress did a great deal for many ungrateful ones, and I believe her character is well shown in what you say of her. She was, indeed, something of a comedian in what she did, a little exaggerated ; as, for instance, when in the Chinese Museum at Fontainebleau, she went to the smoking-room with her ladies to smoke a few cigarettes ; but this, certainly, was no crime. What little shopkeeper but has some such diversion ?

As to her heart, it was not of the best for a woman in her position ; there was no necessity for her to look into everything, even to the extent of interfering with the sovereigns and strangers who came to court, and to forbid them to offer to her servants any fees ; and yet this is what she did.

When she went travelling, she spent a great deal in trying to surpass every one in her bounty, but always with a desire to appear more generous than any one else. To-day, if the Empress ever has any idea of doing any good to her subjects, those who surround her prevent her from doing so. It is known that the Emperor intended to pension his attendants. If he did not do it, the Empress and those about her are responsible. For my part, shortly after the 4th of September, I found a situation, which, thank God, has kept me from want ; but others were not so fortunate.

I was devoted to their Majesties ; but when I see how little they have done for their servants, my devotion is somewhat lessened.

A third letter also throws some light on the maternal affection of the Empress Eugenie, and represents her just as I have shown her to be in character, as well as in her relation to certain political questions.

Sir : — ... Concerning the Prince Imperial, upon occasion of a great demonstration of affection, she would suddenly show a reserve which was almost icy. When the Prince happened to be present at dinner, sitting at the Emperor's right, and dessert would be offered him, he would first observe whether his mother was looking, and in that case would take but little, because she objected to his having sweetmeats. The Emperor often laughed at this little comedy.

The young Prince, without doubt, was more petted by his father. The Empress always assumed towards him an air of great severity, and unfortunately it was, as you say, this lack of tenderness which was one of the causes which determined the poor young Prince to leave home, happy to be free from such exacting restraint.

Proportionately as the Emperor was good to the boy and loved him dearly, the Empress was harsh with him. He did not feel at his ease in her presence. I can still see the Prince at Compi^gne in 1869. It was one night at the theatre and they were playing " La Consigne est de Ronfler," At the part where the ordinary is taken with a colic, the Prince laughed so heartily that all near him were more amused at him than they were at the play. The Emperor was made doubly happy that night in seeing his son so gay.

The Princess Mathilde was there, near the child, and she will recall this circumstance.

I said to myself, as many others doubtless did, it is evident that the Empress is away. She was, in fact, at Suez.

In regard to the defence of the temporal power of the Pope, and the inconsistency of the Empress, I will relate here an anecdote. It was at Saint-Cloud, before the events of Mentana. General Failly had called to receive his final instructions from the Emperor, who had kept him to breakfast. But lo, and behold, at table, in chatting with the Empress, he said that he was to take the train at Lyons at such a time, to arrive at Marseilles with his division. Whereupon the Empress exclaimed, " But, General, you will miss your train, you must hurry off ; you barely have time to reach the station ! " In vain he pleaded that with the mail coach, which was at his command, there would be no delay ; he was obliged against his will to leave before he had finished his breakfast, having received permission to take with him a piece of bread and meat, which he laughingly devoured on his way down-stairs.

Another fact: in 1859, after Magenta, M. Klein de Klenemberg, an ordinary, was ordered by the Emperor to bring to Paris the flags taken from the enemy. But on his arrival, instead of reporting at once at Saint- Cloud, he went home to make his toilet, so as to be presentable to appear before the Empress.

When he was admitted to her Majesty's presence, he was not received as he expected. The Empress, scanning him from head to foot, said : " It is easy to see from your costume, sir, that you come from Italy. You neither smell of powder nor of the dust of the battlefield. When a man has the honour of bringing such splendid trophies, he should present himself at any hour and in any costume."

She was probably alluding to those officers of former times, who would travel any distance and present themselves covered with mud and dust, after having ridden down several horses. Such a scene would have been a little theatrical.

It would certainly be unwise to attach to these different letters undue importance. However, one fact cannot be denied ; they were written by old servants of the Tuileries, who all express for the Emperor and his son a profound admiration and deep gratitude. Why do they not express similar sentiments for the Empress .<* It is allowable to think that if the latter had been as kind as Napoleon III., the same homage which is given to the dead Emperor — who is consequently far from all affection and friendship — would go out as spontaneously to her.

I have been stupidly attacked — I have answered the attack. And now a last word. It was claimed at the time of the publication of some chapters of this book in the Figaro^ that I was writing under an assumed name, and even that I did not exist.

I wish to inform those who have been interested in me, and who will be farther disturbed by the publication of this volume, that I do exist. I have no noni de plimie, and I alone am responsible for this work which I offer to my readers.

P. DE L.

Paris, Januaiy., 1891.

THE EMPRESS EUGENIE.

I. Her Marriage

Less than a year after the proclamation of the Empire, Napoleon III. led to the altar of Notre Dame, Mile. Eugenie de Montijo ; and in making her the Empress of France, fulfilled the promise which he had made some time before.

This marriage, which gave rise to so much gossip, to so much excitement, and to so many intrigues, led one of the most prominent statesmen of that time to make a remark which may have been forgotten.

While every one was saying of Napoleon III., " He is mad ; this union is a folly ! " the statesman in question summed up the situation without anger and without bitterness; and without himself suspecting it, perhaps, gave a psychological epitome of the Second Empire, in its present and future history, in the following words : —

V " This marriage," he said with a smile, " is a lovely poem ! " And then added, '' The Emperor rivals M. de Musset ; and his reign, I fear, will be but 'the song of a night.' "

If this is not a just appreciation from the point of view of history, it must be admitted that it is not without interest to the chronicler.

On the 30th of January, 1853, Napoleon III. married Mile, de Montijo, with a haste which was little understood by those who surrounded him, and less understood by those who with curiosity question the past. The Emperor was a sentimentalist ; but we shall not find in his sentimentality the reason for his haste in marrying Mile, de Montijo. Very susceptible to feminine charm, and accustomed to having his desires satisfied, he happened to fall in love with Mile, de Montijo ; and as she was the only woman he had ever loved or seemed to love who allowed him no liberties, but continually kept him at a distance, in order to gain his end he vowed he would marry her, without thinking of political consequences.

It is also easy to believe that, after the dramatic events which had marked both his Presidency and his advent to the throne, the Emperor felt the need of domestic peace, of a sincere affection which would bring an element of joy into his life. This affection might have been given him by a different woman from Mile. j\ de Montijo, by some woman worthy by birth '^' to be his wife ; but I repeat, the Emperor did not love a king's daughter ; he loved an humble daughter of Spain, and he listened only to the promptings of his heart. Afterwards, when years had made this folly a distant memory, did he regret this outbreak of a passion which interested and perplexed all Europe } No one can tell. He evidently took into account, as any man would who weighs his love in the balance, the difficulties which that union brought into his reign.

But he was good, he was gallant, and he was a fatalist ; so he never complained, he never V.'

wounded the heart of the Empress by any allusion whatever to what his friends called his .)f^ folly. cy^

Mile, de Montijo was a Spaniard, and, being such, was superstitious. One day, when quite a young girl, while out walking, she had met a ^

gypsy, who in return for alms told her her for- ^- ^..^\' - tune, and declared that she would be a queen. ^

Although she appeared to have attached but ^^^'^-^ little importance to this prediction, even after her marriage, it is certain that the gypsy's IM^

words had made an impression ; so that, having had opportunities to marry the highest dignitaries of her own country, first the Due d'Ossuna, who had asked her for her hand, next the Due de Sesto, then Due d'Alcanizes, with whom she was evidently taken, she refused the offer of the first, and silenced her own heart, which was in favor of the second. Feigning a great sympathy for France and the French, she declared her intention to marry no one but a Frenchman ; and without much fear of making a mistake, we may suppose that, once settled in France, face to face with the bachelor Emperor, whom she had been able to meet, she remembered the prediction of the gypsy, as well as the lovers, who, from a worldly standpoint or from her own inclination, she might have chosen, but whom she scorned.

On his part, since the second of December the Emperor had not been without opportunities of an alliance appropriate to the rank which he had assumed.

Certain young women who had rejected his attentions and his courtship when he was only a prince and something of an adventurer, such as the Duchess of Hamilton, daughter of the Grand Duchess Stephanie de Bade, his cousin, such as the Princess Mathile, also his cousin, were not without regrets at this time. The adventurer now had a crown in each hand, one for himself, the other for her whom he should make his wife.

When he was only the Prince-President, the daughter of the Prince de Wagram had been offered to him, and at a house in the rue de la Rochefoucauld, the residence of Prince Wagram, a ball had been proposed in honour of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, to arrange the preliminaries of a marriage. The President accepted the invitation of his host, and went to the ball given in his honour. But the young girl did not please him. Was he perhaps already in love 1 Who knows } And having withdrawn, and never returning, the project ended there. Later he wished to marry Mile. Wagram to the Prince Jerome Napoleon ; but her father's answer was short : " I would have given my daughter," he said, " to the Prince-President ; but I refuse to give her to his cousin." There is pride in these words. But, alas ! do they not complete the fable of the Heron }

The Prince de Wagram, in fact, gave his daughter's hand a short time after this incident to the Prince Joachim Murat. ;' The most important alliance, from a political standpoint, that was talked of for Napoleon IIL, is without doubt that which was attempted with the house of Prussia.

y -] There was some question of an alliance between the Emperor and the Princess of Hohenzollern, sister of the famous prince of that name who cost us the war of 1870.

What determines the destiny of nations ? If he had been the brother-in-law of the Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, it is certain that Napoleon III. would not have been interested in the affairs of Spain, and that the catastrophe which laid us low would never have existed. But what is the use to recriminate and to discuss what might have been } '

The hearts of kings, as well as those of ordinary men, are at the mercy of a beautiful face. La Fontaine's saying, "Love, Love, when you hold us in your grasp, it is time to say, farewell, Prudence ! " is true for all men, and no man is the master of his instincts, of his destiny. The marriage of the Emperor with Mile, de Montijo was not concluded without difficulty, and the disagreement to which it gave rise between Napoleon III. and his uncle, the old Jerome, is well known.