It has been even said that it was Nigra’s poetic skill as much as anything which impelled the “dumb Emperor” to hand over Venetia to the young Kingdom of Italy. What is more certain is that Nigra made two powerful friends of the Marquis d’Azeglio and the celebrated Signor Manzoni by writing, when he was a humble clerk in the Sardinian Foreign Office, a poem dedicated to d’Azeglio’s daughter on her marriage to Comte Matteo Ricci, the Marquis at the time being Prime Minister. That poem gave Nigra a step in the “F.O.,” but had not Cavour made him his secretary he might have had no opportunity of showing that he could do something better than pen little lyrics, copy despatches, and warble a chanson to the Empress’s eyebrow. In his most poetical moments he could hardly have imagined that a day would come when he would be aiding the subject of his love-song to escape from the fury of the mob by pushing her into a common fiacre and refusing to “wait for Metternich’s carriage.”
In one of his interesting volumes Comte d’Hérisson appears to have narrated the story of the Empress Eugénie’s voyage from Trouville to Ryde after her flight from the Tuileries. A letter to Sir John Burgoyne on the subject brought the French author the following reply:
Cowes, Isle of Wight,
December 27, 1889.
Sir,
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of December 14, and I beg to express my regret that I am obliged to reply to it in my own language.
With reference to the statements published in your “Letters of an Aide-de-Camp” concerning the passage of H.M. the Empress Eugénie from France to England in 1870, I have never seen the book, but only an extract from it, concerning myself, sent to me by a friend, and which statements you now tell me were communicated to you by Dr. T. W. Evans.
It is difficult to recall details after the lapse of so many years, but my recollection is that Lady Burgoyne and myself were on board the Royal Yacht Squadron cutter, Gazelle, forty-two tons, in Deauville (Trouville) harbour during the first week of September, 1870.
On the morning of September 6 Dr. Evans’s card was given to me; I went on deck, and one of two gentlemen introduced himself as Dr. Evans. He told me that Her Majesty the Empress was in Deauville, and he asked me to take her on board the yacht at once, as she was in danger and in distress.
I acknowledge that at the moment I thought the story so unlikely that I did not believe one word of it, and I have no doubt that I expressed myself to that effect.
I asked Dr. Evans to speak to Lady Burgoyne, and she told me that Dr. Evans was the well-known American dentist in Paris, and that his statement was probably true. There was but one other yacht in the harbour, and that was a small schooner, hired by the late Lord Charles Hamilton. No American yacht was at or near Trouville, and the statements as to Dr. Evans having had to threaten to embark Her Majesty the Empress in such a vessel never occurred.