I know how to get rid of them [General Fleury and M. Emile Ollivier], and to deliver the Emperor from them.
Doctors try to cure the body before the soul; but that is impossible.
Your philosophical reflections are very beautiful; the thing is to put them in practice.
One must be very wicked to wound the feelings of those who extend their hands in friendship.
The Empress had a protégée whose relatives were anxious that she should marry a Duke, and they entreated Her Majesty to induce the young lady to accept the suitor. This the Empress declined to do. “Greatness is purchased too dearly,” she said, “and so I will not persuade Mlle. —— to enter into this alliance.”
There are etymological purists who have asserted that Her Majesty’s French is not absolutely flawless; but this is a reproach to which other august personages are subject. That the Empress’s native Spanish colours her pronunciation of certain French words, she herself would probably be the first to admit. Similarly, the Emperor’s German education accounted for his amusing mispronunciation of some French words. Did he not, for example, invariably address his consort as “Ugenie”? And is not Bismarck credited with having once said to him, with well-concealed sarcasm: “I have never heard French spoken as your Majesty speaks it”? In the opinion of that master of phrases, a Sovereign’s education was complete if he knew French thoroughly and could ride well. Napoleon III. had a perfect seat on horseback—so good, indeed, that it was said of him that he only looked a real Emperor when he was mounted; and none but Bismarck would have ventured to criticize his pronunciation.
CHAPTER VI
APOGEE OF THE SECOND EMPIRE
The Empress has to her credit the creation of Biarritz, which developed from a little Basque village into the French Brighton, and became a seat of the imperial Court. The Villa Eugénie was a square, unadorned building, standing on a slope leading to the sea, with a glorious lookout over the waters of the Bay of Biscay. Felix Whitehurst, who was at Biarritz in 1867, the palmy year of the Empire, noted the curious fact that the fee-simple of the bit of waste land on which the imperial villa was built was acquired by the Emperor for £12; and that just beyond the valley, to the east, there was a model farm, worked by “Louis Napoleon, proprietor, rentier, and Emperor.”[39]
The Court led a primitive life in what, a few years previously, had been no more than an insignificant little sardine fishing village, unknown to the great world even by name. The first thing the Daily Telegraph’s sparkling Paris correspondent saw on his arrival was a compact crowd following the Emperor and Empress, who were strolling up the High Street. His Majesty wore a low two-inch-crowned white hat with a broad brim. It was not Biarritz, but St. Jean-de-Luz, which was “very nearly the scene of a catastrophe which would have plunged all Europe into mourning,” as a result of the Empress (who was a good sailor and also a good swimmer) cruising in a small steamer in a very heavy sea. The Empress and the Prince Imperial had to get into a small boat to land. The boat struck on a rock, nearly capsized, and began to fill. The Empress was up to her waist in water, and the little Prince (then only eleven) almost out of his depth. The pilot lost his head, jumped into the water, and was drowned. The Sovereign and her son (according to other chroniclers) were carried through the boiling surf on the backs of sailors. How the Emperor learnt of the mishap has not been told; but he arrived at St. Jean-de-Luz, eight miles from Biarritz, “as fast as horses could bring him.” There was mild scolding all round, but the soft-hearted Emperor was too thankful at finding his loved ones in safety to use harsh language to anybody.
Among the visitors at Villa Eugénie at that time was Baron Goltz, then Prussian Ambassador to France; and Mr. Whitehurst notes that “the great cloudy German Question” was even then “the incubus of Europe.”