The Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau was a contemporary of some very celebrated women whose names, at least, are still remembered. There were notably the Princesse de Sagan, the Duchesse de Mouchy, the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtalès, and the Marquise de Galliffet, wife of that dashing cavalryman of whom so many amusing stories are told.[107] Our Comtesse shone at the head of the famous “Décameron,” and was counted the most beautiful of the lovely group. They wittily said of her that her grandmother was a goddess, her mother a queen, and she herself a “moderne.” For the first there was Olympus, for the second a throne, for the third the little English cart, which, said one of her sprightly friends, “takes to the Allée des Acacias every morning our mondaines semi-garçons.”
As already hinted, the young Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau made a sensation in Paris society—in the Faubourg as well as at the Tuileries, at Compiègne, and at St. Cloud. The Empress Eugénie admitted her into close friendship. The Emperor paid her his most respectful homage. If a particularly delicate mission had to be undertaken, who so fit to carry it out as this charming woman? We need not wonder, then, that Napoleon III., in the hour of his despair, appealed to her devotion, and charged her to go, as his ambassadress, “séduire le vainqueur et tenter de sauver la France.” Many women envied the Comtesse her mission to Berlin, foredoomed to failure as it was.
The Comtesse was renowned for her jewellery. In diamonds she outshone the Empress; her pearls were the finest in the world; she possessed the family jewels both of the Chimays and the De Mercys. After the war she devoted herself to study. She shines as a musician, in languages she is proficient, she paints miniatures à merveille, and she has always been a sportswoman.
Napoleon III. had been in captivity at Wilhelmshöhe about five months when he began an active correspondence with the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau, who, on at least one memorable occasion, acted as the intermediary between the dethroned monarch and the late Emperor William. The letters addressed to the Comtesse by the Emperor Napoleon are distinguished by their poignant interest and frank outspokenness; they are, indeed, a revelation of the unhappy man’s innermost thoughts, his aspirations, his fears, and, finally, his apparent abandonment of hope, although we know that, later, his ideas underwent a great change.
Not the least curious feature of the correspondence given to the world in 1906 through the medium of an important German review, the Verlagen and Klasing Monatshefte, is the fact that we hear for the first time of the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau as figuring prominently in the Bonapartist propaganda of the autumn of 1870, throughout 1871, and up to September, 1872, the Emperor’s final letter, surcharged with gloom, bearing date, Chislehurst, September 9.[108] There is no doubt about their authenticity, for, with one or two exceptions, the epistles are contained in their original envelopes, properly stamped, and bear the postmarks “Cassel” (Wilhelmshöhe) and “Terwagne” (near which Belgian town the château of the Mercy-Argenteaus is situated).
The first letter of the series was written to the Comtesse from the Tuileries, and is a graceful reference to the Count’s naturalization.
When Napoleon III. was at the Tuileries.
November 7, 1869.
Madame,
It is with pleasure that I announce to you that yesterday I signed the Decree which gives to your husband the rights of naturalization. I congratulate myself upon having one Frenchman and one Frenchwoman more.