It was at a Ministerial Council held later at Fontainebleau that a dramatic incident occurred. The Emperor had asked his consort to be present, somewhat to the embarrassment of Thouvenel, whose duty it was to present a report recommending an early recognition of the new kingdom of Italy. This did not at all accord with the Empress’s well-known views. Scarcely had the Foreign Minister concluded the reading of the report than she burst into tears and left the Council Chamber. There was a painful silence, broken by the Emperor saying to Marshal Vaillant: “Please follow Her Majesty and attend to her.”
CHAPTER X
COMPIÈGNE
The social history of the Second Empire was resumed in the Tuileries, St. Cloud, Fontainebleau, Biarritz, and Compiègne. The name of the latter lingered fondly on the lips of the fine fleur of English society between 1855 and the winter of 1869-70. It is well to remember that it was to Queen Victoria that we owed the entente cordiale. That, as time passed, the mutual understanding which she secured flickered, and gave place to bad blood after the “attempt” of Orsini, Pierri, Rudio, and Gomez, was no fault of Queen Victoria. But the bombs were designed by the master-mind in Belgium, and manufactured at Birmingham, and London was the scene of the “conspirations.” It is true that the personal relations between the Sovereigns, which had been securely cemented in 1855 at Windsor, London, Osborne, and St. Cloud, remained unchanged, and naturally. Was not Queen Victoria the best friend the French Sovereigns possessed in Europe? What angered the French nation was the shelter given to the Italian assassins by England. Had it been otherwise, the tragedy of January 14, 1858, would have been more difficult—perhaps impossible—of achievement. Such was the French view, and not an unreasonable one.
But even the attempted murder of Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugénie did not, we may assume, cause English people who were honoured with invitations to Compiègne to think twice before accepting them. Those “Compiègnes”—how many souvenirs the mention of them evokes! Was it not at Compiègne that Mme. Fortoul’s gross insult had as an immediate result the Emperor’s belated “proposal” to Mlle. Eugénie de Montijo? Was it not there that the Prince and Princess of Wales were the principal figures in 1868, when any Cassandra who had ventured to predict the imminence of a “Sedan” would have been derided and scorned?[65]
The first of what came to be known as “the Compiègnes” dates from December 18, 1852, six weeks before the marriage, and the Comtesse de Montijo and her daughter were of the party. The Emperor of a fortnight had arrived at the château a few days previously amidst the roar of cannon; he had passed under triumphal arches and between rows of troops and the local firemen; his unmusical ears had been amused by the “tralalas” of the peasantry gathered from the countryside for miles around. With him came his cousins, Prince Jérôme Napoleon (not yet married to Princesse Clotilde, one of the survivors of to-day) and Princesse Mathilde (who had been long separated from her impossible husband, Prince Anatole Demidoff), Ambassadors and Imperial Ministers, and, of course, many ladies—Mme. Drouyn de Lhuys, Mme. de Persigny, and Mme. de Contades, to mention a few.
THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE IN SPANISH COSTUME.
