The Council of Regency had in the night melted away. A mob was surging round the Tuileries. Where had the empress-regent fled?
When disasters had followed fast upon one another, the empress had in her bewilderment found it hard to realize that the end of the empire was at hand. Bazaine was the man whom she relied on. She had no great liking for Marshal MacMahon, and she does not appear to have been conscious that all was lost till, on the night of September 4, she found M. Conti, the emperor's secretary, busy destroying his private papers. To burn them was impossible; they were torn into small bits and put in a bath-tub, then hot water was poured over them, which reduced them to pulp. Vast quantities, however, remained undestroyed, some of them compromising to their writers.
When the truth of the situation broke upon the empress, she was very much frightened. Her dread was that she might be torn in pieces by a mob that would invade the Tuileries. In a fortnight her fair face had become haggard, and white streaks showed themselves in her beautiful hair.
It is safest in such cases to trust foreigners rather than subjects. Two foreigners occupied themselves with plans for the empress's personal safety. The first idea was that if flight became inevitable, she should take refuge with the Sisters of the Sacré Cœur, in their convent in the Rue Picpus; and arrangements had been made for this contingency.
The life of the empress was strange and piteous during her last days upon the throne. She was up every morning by seven, and heard mass. Her dress was black cashmere, with a white linen collar and cuffs. All day she was the victim of every person who claimed an audience, all talking, protesting, gesticulating, and generally begging. The day the false rumor arrived that the Prussians had been defeated at the Quarries of Jaumont she flew down to the guard-room, where the soldiers off duty were lounging on their beds, waving the telegram over her head.
The news of the capitulation at Sedan and of the decree deposing the emperor, roused the Parisian populace. By one o'clock on September 5 the mob began to threaten the Tuileries. Then the Italian ambassador, Signor Nigra, and the Austrian ambassador, Prince Richard Metternich, insisted that the empress must seek a place of safety. As it was impossible to reach the street from the Tuileries, they made their way through the long galleries of the Louvre, and gained the entrance opposite the parish church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois.[1] The street was blocked with people uttering cries against the emperor. A gamin recognized the fugitives, and shouted, "Here comes the empress!" De Nigra gave him a kick, and asked him how he dared to cry: "Vive l'Empereur?" At this the crowd turned upon the boy, and in the confusion the empress and her lady-in-waiting were put into a cab, driven, it is said, by Gamble, the emperor's faithful English coachman. If this were so, the empress did not recognize him, for after proceeding a little way, she and Madame le Breton, her companion, finding they had but three francs between them, and dreading an altercation with the cabman if this were not enough to pay their fare, got out, and proceeded on foot to the house of the American dentist, Dr. Thomas Evans. There they had to wait till admitted to his operating-room. The doctor's amazement when he saw them was great; he had not been aware of what was passing at the Tuileries, but he took his hat, and went out to collect information. Soon he returned to tell the empress that she had not escaped a moment too soon.
[Footnote 1: Temple Bar, 1883.]
His wife was at Deauville, a fashionable watering-place in Normandy. The doctor placed her wardrobe at the disposal of the empress, who had saved nothing of her own but a few jewels. It is said she owned three hundred dresses, and her collection of fans, laces, etc., was probably unique. Her own servants had begun to pillage her wardrobe before she left the Tuileries. It is said that she would have gone forth on horseback and have put herself at the head of the troops, but that no riding-habit had been left her, except a gay green-and-gold hunting dress worn by her at Fontainebleau. That morning no servant in the Tuileries could be found to bring her breakfast to her chamber.
The next day Dr. Evans, in his own carriage, took her