NOTE
Madame de Hegermann-Lindencrone, the writer of these letters, which give so vivid a picture of the brilliant court of the last Napoleon, is the wife of the present Danish Minister to Germany. She was formerly Miss Lillie Greenough, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lived with her grandfather, Judge Fay, in the fine old Fay mansion, now the property of Radcliffe College.
As a child Miss Greenough developed the remarkable voice which later was to make her well known, and when only fifteen years of age her mother took her to London to study under Garcia. Two years later Miss Greenough became the wife of Charles Moulton, the son of a well-known American banker, who had been a resident in Paris since the days of Louis Philippe. As Madame Charles Moulton, the charming American became an appreciated guest at the court of Napoleon III. The Paris papers of the days of the Second Empire are filled with the praises of her personal attractions and exquisite singing.
After nine years of gaiety in the gayest city in the world came the war of 1870 and the Commune. Upon the fall of the Empire, Mrs. Moulton returned to America, where Mr. Moulton died, and a few years afterward she married M. de Hegermann-Lindencrone, at that time Danish Minister to the United States, and later successively his country's representative at Stockholm, Rome, and Paris.
Few persons of her day have known so many of those whom the world has counted great. Among her friends have been not only the ruling monarchs of several countries, and the most distinguished men and women of their courts, but almost all the really important figures in the world of music of the past half-century, among them Wagner, Liszt, Auber, Gounod, and Rossini. And of many of these great men the letters give us glimpses of the most fascinatingly intimate sort.