An Interlude of Peace.
The war-clouds sank below the horizon, the Paris Exhibition was duly opened, sovereigns and princes, statesmen and generals, journeyed to the French capital, and the Court of the Tuileries gave itself up to amusement, gaiety, and dissipation, neglecting nothing which could give pleasure to its illustrious guests. It was the last hour of splendour, the sunset of the Empire. Yet the brilliant scenes, which followed each other day by day, were even then flecked with dark shades. If politics were evaded or ignored in the palace, they were not absent from the highways. Polish hatred found vent in the attempt of Berezowski to slay the unfortunate Emperor Alexander II., and M. Floquet shouted in his ear as he passed through the Courts of Justice, “Vive la Pologne!” The crime and the insult augured ill for the future of that Franco-Russian alliance which Charles X. endeavoured to establish and certain French statesmen have always sighed for. M. Hansen records a sharp observation made by Prince Gortchakoff during the Polish insurrection which the Western Powers regarded with friendly eyes. The Vice-Chancellor held that France and Russia were natural allies, because their interests were the same. “If the Emperor Napoleon will not admit it,” he roughly said, “so much the worse for him. Governments vanish, nations remain.” Still, in 1867, he did not find the nation more favourable than the Government had been in 1864. Twenty years later, although Russia had become less unpopular, at least with the politicians, and a yearning for a Russian alliance had gathered strength, the ultras proved how little they understood some conditions essential to its gratification by clamoring for the pardon and liberation of Berezowski! The Prussian King and Queen were not exposed to any outrage, and the Parisians gazed with curiosity upon Bismarck and Moltke, whom they admired, and had not yet learned to detest; but the sparkling and joyful assemblies, although the actors, on both sides, were doubtless sincere at the time, nevertheless suggests a famous incident in the French Revolution which figures on historical pages as “le baiser de l’amourette.” And underneath the shining surface were concealed gnawing anxieties and fears. The Emperor Napoleon had dreamed that he could found a Mexican empire, and he had induced the Austrian Archduke Maximilian to accept at his hands an Imperial crown. The enterprise, which was pushed on by French troops, not only failed, but irritated England, who had been deceived, and offended the United States, whose Government, victors in a civil war, would not tolerate the establishment of the “Latin race” in the centre of the huge continent. Not only had it become necessary to recall the troops, but to bear a still deeper misfortune—if the word may be applied to the consequences of a reckless and unscrupulous adventure. It was while opening the Exhibition that the earliest hints reached the Emperor of an event which dealt him a heavy blow; and, on the eve of the day fixed for the distribution of prizes to the competitors he had assembled, came the confirmation of the dreaded intelligence, whispered weeks before. The gallant Archduke and Emperor Maximilian, who had fallen into the hands of the triumphant and implacable Mexicans, had been tried and shot, a deed which his French patron was powerless to avenge.