Enough. I went to the Compiègne of Napoléon III., just as I had gone to the Compiègne of the latter years of Louis-Philippe—simply to enjoy myself; with this difference, however,—that I enjoyed myself much better at the former than at the latter. Louis-Philippe's hospitality was very genuine, homely, and unpretending, but it lacked excitement—especially for a young man of my age. The entertainments were more in harmony with the tastes of the Guizots, Cousins, and Villemains, who went down en redingote, and took little else; especially the eminent professor and minister of public education, whose luggage consisted of a brown paper parcel, containing a razor, a clean collar, and the cordon of the Legion of Honour. There were some excellent hunts, organized by the Grand Veneur, the Comte de Girardin, and the Chief Ranger, the Baron de Larminat; but the evenings, notwithstanding the new theatre built by Louis-Philippe, were frightfully dull, and barely compensated for by the reviews at the camp of Compiègne, to which the King conducted his Queen and the princesses in a tapissière and four, he himself driving, the Duc and Duchesse de Montpensier occupying the box seat, the rest of the family ensconced in the carriage, "absolument en bons bourgeois." With the advent of Louis-Napoléon, even before he assumed the imperial purple, a spirit of change came over the place. Hortense's second son would probably have made a better poet than an emperor. His whole life has been a miscarried poem, miscarried by the inexorable demands of European politics. He dreamt of being L'Empereur-Soleil, as Louis XIV. had been Le Roi-Soleil. Visions of a nineteenth-century La Vallière or Montespan, hanging fondly on his arm, and dispelling the harassing cares of State by sweet smiles while treading the cool umbrageous glades of the magnificent park, haunted his brain. He would have gone as far as Louis le Bien-Aimé, and built another nest for another Pompadour. He did not mean to make a Maintenon out of a Veuve Scarron, and, least of all, an empress out of a Mademoiselle Eugénie de Montijo. Mdlle. de Montijo, on the other hand, was determined not to be a Mdme. de Maintenon, let alone a La Vallière or a Pompadour. At any rate, so she said, and the man most interested in putting her assertion to the test was too infatuated to do so. "Quand on ne s'attend à rien, la moindre des choses surprend." The proverb holds good, more especially where a woman's resistance is concerned. Mdlle. de Montijo was a Spaniard, or at least half a one, and that half contained as much superstition as would have fitted out a score of her countrywomen of unmixed blood. One day in Granada, while she was sitting at her window, a gipsy, whose hand "she had crossed with silver," is said to have foretold her that she should be queen. The young girl probably attached but little importance to the words at that time; "but," said my informant, "from the moment Louis-Napoléon breathed the first protestations of love to her, the prophecy recurred to her in all its vividness, and she made up her mind that the right hand and not the left of Louis-Napoléon should set the seal upon its fulfilment." My informant was an Englishman, very highly placed, and distinctly au courant of the private history of the Marquise de Montijo y Teba, as well as that of her mother. Without the least fear of being contradicted, I may say that the subsequent visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was due to his direct influence. I will not go as far as to assert that Louis-Napoléon's participation in the Crimean war could not have been had at that moment at any other price, or that England could not have dispensed with that co-operation, but he, my informant, considered then that the alliance would be more closely cemented by that visit. Nor am I called upon to anticipate the final verdict of the social historian with regard to "that act of courtesy" on the part of the Queen of England, not the least justified boast of whose reign it is that she purified the morals of her court by her own example. Still, one may safely assume, in this instance, that the virtue of Mdlle. de Montijo would have been proof against the "blandishments of the future Emperor," even if she had not had the advice and countenance of her mother, whose Scotch blood would not have stood trifling with her daughter's affections and reputation. But to make the fortress of that heart doubly impregnable, the Comtesse de Montijo scarcely ever left her second daughter's side. It was a great sacrifice on her part, because Mdlle. Eugénie de Montijo was not her favourite child; that position was occupied by her elder, the Duchesse d'Albe. "Mais, on est mère, ou on ne l'est pas?" says Madame Cardinal.[59]
Mdlle. de Montijo, then, became the guiding spirit of the fêtes at the Élysée. She and her mother had travelled a great deal, so had Louis-Napoléon; the latter not enough, apparently, to have learnt the wisdom of the French proverb, "Gare à la femme dont le berceau a été une malle, et le pensionnat une table d'hôte."
I have spoken elsewhere of the Coup d'État and of the company at the Élysée, immediately previous to it and afterwards; early in 1852—
"The little done did vanish to the mind,
Which forward saw how much remained to do."
The Prince-President undertook a journey to the southern parts of France, which he was pleased to call "an interrogation to the country." It was that to a certain extent, only the country had been crammed with one reply to it, "Vive l'empereur." Calmly reviewing things from a distance of a quarter of a century, it was the best reply the nation could have made. "Society has been too long like a pyramid turned upside down. I replaced it on its base," said Louis-Napoléon, on the 29th of March, 1852, when he opened the first session of the Chambers, and inaugurated the new constitution which was his own work. "He is right," remarked one of his female critics, "and now we are going to dance on the top of it. À quand les invitations?"
The invitations were issued almost immediately after the journey just mentioned, and before the plébiscite had given the Prince-President the Imperial crown. One of the first was for a series of fêtes at Compiègne. The château was got ready in hot haste; but, of course, the "hunts" were not half so splendid as they became afterwards.
The most observed of all the guests was Mdlle. de Montijo, accompanied by her mother, but no one suspected for a single moment that the handsome Spanish girl who was galloping by Louis-Napoléon's side would be in a few months Empress of the French. Only a few knowing ones offered to back her for the Imperial Stakes at any odds; I took them, and, of course, lost heavily. This is not a figure of speech, but a literal fact. There were, however, no quotations "for a place," backers and bookies alike being agreed that she would be first or nowhere in the race.
How it would have fared with the favourite had there been any other entries, it would be difficult to say, but there were none; the various European sovereigns declined the honour of an alliance with the house of Bonaparte, so Mdlle. Eugénie de Montijo simply walked over the course. One evening the rumour spread that Louis-Napoléon had uttered the magic word "marriage," in consequence of a violent fit of coughing which had choked the word "mistress" down his throat. Not to mince matters, the affair happened in this way, and I speak on excellent authority. The day before, there had been a hunt, and between the return from the forest and the dinner-hour, Napoléon had presented himself unannounced in Mdlle. de Montijo's apartment. Neither I nor the others who were at the château at the time could satisfactorily account for the prologue to this visit, but that there was such a prologue, and that it was conceived and enacted by at least two out of the three actors in the best spirit of the "comédie d'intrigue," so dear to the heart of Scribe, admits of no doubt; because, though the first dinner-bell had already rung, Mdlle. de Montijo was still in her riding-habit, consequently on the alert. Nay, even her dainty hunting-crop was within her reach, as the intruder found to his cost; and reports were rife to the effect that, if the one had failed, the mother, who was in the next room, would have come to the rescue of her injured daughter.
The Comtesse de Montijo was spared this act of heroism; Lucrece herself sufficed for the task of defending her own honour: nevertheless, the mother's part was not at an end, even when the decisive word had been pronounced. According to her daughter, she objected to the union, from a sincere regard for her would-be-son-in-law, from an all-absorbing love for her own darling. The social gulf between the two was too wide ever to be bridged, etc. "And though it will break my heart to have to obey her, I have no alternative," added Mdlle. de Montijo, if not in these selfsame words, at least in words to that effect. "There remains but one hope. Write to her."
And Louis-Napoléon did write. The letter has been religiously preserved by the Montijo family. In less than three mouths afterwards France was officially or semi-officially apprised of the Emperor's intended union; but, of course, the news had spread long before then, and a very varied effect it produced. Candidly speaking, it satisfied no one, and every one delivered judgment in two separate, if not different, capacities—as private citizens and as patriotic Frenchmen. The lower classes, containing the ultra-democratic element, would have perhaps applauded the bold departure from the old traditions that had hitherto presided at sovereign unions, if the bride had been French, instead of being a foreigner. They were sensible enough not to expect their new Emperor to choose from the bourgeoisie; but, in spite of their prejudices against the old noblesse, they would, in default of a princess of royal blood, have liked to see one of that noblesse's daughters share the Imperial throne. They were not deceived by Napoléon's specious argument that France had better assume openly the position of a parvenu rather than make the new principle of the unrestricted suffrage of a great nation pass for an old one by trying to introduce herself at any cost into a family of kings.