Upon Mr. Evans’s return the servant told him that two ladies, very oddly attired, were waiting to see him, and the dentist at once guessed who they were. “Ah, yes,” he remarked, “they have come to bother me again. We must try to get them across the Atlantic as soon as possible.”
He had previously arranged how the Empress was to escape. While two of his best horses were being harnessed, the Empress and Mme. Lebreton wrapped themselves in some plaid shawls which they found in Mrs. Evans’s wardrobe. Then they were driven off in Mr. Evans’s carriage. They stopped first at Evreux to change horses, which had been telegraphed for in advance; next, at Trouville. Nobody imagined that it could be the Empress of the French who was travelling in this fashion. Happier than Louis XVI. at Varennes, the Empress was not recognized anywhere, not even at the hotel at Trouville, to which Mr. Evans conducted her.
When the Empress and Mme. Lebreton were comfortably installed at the hotel, Mr. Evans hurried off to the harbour, where he found two yachts moored. Sir John Burgoyne, the owner of one of the vessels, when first asked by Mr. Evans if he would take two ladies to England, refused, but relented when, under a pledge of secrecy, he learnt that it was a question of saving the Empress.
In this version of the Empress’s flight from the Tuileries no mention is made of the prominent part played in the episode by the then Austrian Ambassador (the husband of the still-living Princess Pauline Metternich, who gave herself the very uncomplimentary sobriquet, the “singe à la mode”), and the Italian Minister, Chevalier Nigra, who died at Rapolla in July, 1907. When Nigra’s death was announced, the English newspapers published a variety of versions of his share in the Empress’s escape, but I am disposed to think that the vérité vraie is to be found in the subjoined brief narrative, from the pen of M. Maurice Dumoulin.
The gates of the Tuileries were forced open by the excited, exasperated crowd. The déchéance had been pronounced on the steps of the Corps Législatif, and the Republic proclaimed. The Empress must quit. Early on that terrible Sunday afternoon M. Franceschini Pietri half opened the door of the Empress’s salon and exclaimed, “Madame, there is only just time!” Prince Richard Metternich (the Austrian Ambassador) and Chevalier Nigra were with him. “Make haste, Madame!” said Nigra, who watched from the windows the progress of the émeute; “make haste!” The Empress snatched up a waterproof, a hat with a brown veil, and some portraits.
Nigra again exclaimed: “Be quick, Madame! I can hear them; they are coming up!” The Empress took Metternich’s arm. Nigra walked by her side. Like a whirlwind the Empress and the Ambassadors, followed by Mme. Lebreton, M. Conti, and Dr. Conneau, flew across the salles of the Louvre Museum, making for St.-Germain-l’Auxerrois, where Prince Metternich’s carriage had been ordered to wait; but the vehicle was not there, and the Prince went in search of it. Nigra remained alone with the Empress and Mme. Lebreton. Meanwhile the crowd increased. As the little group stood in the street, a boy, who was watching them, recognized the principal figure, and cried out, “Tiens! Voilà l’Impératrice!” Nigra’s presence of mind saved the situation. “What, you little scamp!” exclaimed the Ambassador; “you dare to shout ‘Vive la Prusse!’” Just then, before the bystanders could realize who was in their midst at the most critical moment in her life, an unoccupied fiacre jolted by. Securing it, Nigra pushed the Empress and her companion into the cab, saying: “Get in, Madame. We cannot wait for Metternich’s brougham.”
Not only was Nigra possessed of great intellectual powers, he was the handsomest of men, and that fact contributed in no small degree to his success in diplomacy. Count Cavour had a great friend in the Comtesse de Circourt, née Anastasie de Klustine, whose salon was the resort of many political and literary celebrities. She helped to “launch” Nigra, to whom she wrote: “What strikes one so forcibly is the perfect harmony of your youth with the maturity of your look. M. D—— says your profile reminds him of a Greek statue. And he is right.” Nigra took up his abode at the hotel of the Italian Embassy (formerly the home of the Piedmontese Legation), at the Rond Point of the Champs-Elysées, and was soon made much of, for his reputation had preceded him. Cavour had written to his friends in Paris: “Nigra knows all my thoughts,” and that alone was sufficient to insure the young diplomatist’s success.
Nigra’s rôle was a very difficult one. He had to conciliate French diplomatists, to keep “well in” with the Emperor, and to avoid creating jealousy amongst the foreign Ambassadors and Ministers. Above all, he had to secure the goodwill of the Empress Eugénie, who had no love for a Government which was attacking the temporal power of the Pope. But Nigra succeeded. How he did it is still a mystery. He got on terms of intimacy with the Emperor and Empress, and even stifled the jealousy of Prince Metternich.
Nigra was not only a diplomatist and a handsome man—“beau comme Apollon”—but a poet. One afternoon (it was a soft June day in 1863) the imperial hostess and some of her guests were trying a Venetian gondola on the lake at Fontainebleau. The Empress asked the gondolier to sing something appropriate; but the man declared that Nature had not endowed him with a voice. But Nigra was there, and Nigra would sing. He warbled in those beautiful, seductive tones which had struck responsive chords in the hearts of many before he had bewitched the imperial lady, the favourite “Gondola,” which he had himself written and submitted to Prosper Mérimée, who was pleased to approve it. The singer ended with these daring lines:
Oh femme, si parfois ton lac paisible doit voir voguant sur tes côtes le muet Empéreur, dis-lui que sur les rives de l’Adriatique, pauvre, nue, exsangue Venise souffre et languit. Mais elle vit ... et elle attend encore. (Oh lady, if sometimes thy peaceful lake sees wandering by thy side the dumb Emperor, tell him that, on the shores of the Adriatic, poor, naked, bloodless Venice suffers and languishes. But she lives ... and she is still expectant.)