THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE.
A.D. 1826.
“Then happy low, lie down;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”—Shakespeare.
“EVERYTHING happens in France,” says La Rochefoucauld; and indeed it would seem so. The history of no other country of modern times presents such a series of rapid changes, decided extremes, and strange incongruities. Monarchies, empires, republics, follow each other in rapid succession. Yet through it all—in base servility or in fierce revolt, in licentiousness or prudery, in anarchy or order, in despotism or demagogy; under Valois, Bourbon, or Bonaparte; from Versailles and Louis XIV. to Malmaison of the First, and Compiègne of the Second Empire—we see the same thoughts, the same ideas, the same traits of character, though veiled under different garbs.
In 1685 the House of Bourbon was at the zenith of its glory. France, crushed with oppression, bowed beneath its yoke. One hundred and fifty thousand souls rioted in luxury. Twenty-five millions toiled to administer to their luxury. The people cried for bread, and proud, licentious nobles bid them “eat grass,” while the monarch, from his gilded palace, thundered forth his arbitrary dictum, “L’État c’est moi!”
“The kingdom is in a deplorable state,” said Mirabeau. “It can only be regenerated by some great internal convulsion. But woe to those who live to see that. The French people do not do things by halves.” The convulsion comes. The French people do not do things by halves. The throne falls with a crash, and the guillotine stands in the Place de la Concorde.
Then comes the Empire. Glory is the object sought, and glory is attained. France is ablaze with glory. Rivoli. Austerlitz. Waterloo! And the First Empire—with its glories and its triumphs, its crowns and its sceptres, its stars and its crosses—fades like a dream, and is gone. The Bourbons return to the homes of their ancestors. Again the storm arises, and the Republic is proclaimed. The Republic becomes the Empire. Laurels, crowns, triumph! Glory is sought, but ’tis pacific glory. “The Empire is peace.” France prospers. But a dark cloud gathers on the horizon. The thunder peals. War rages fast and furious. Defeat, disaster, ruin! The Empire has fallen to pieces! Bourbon and Bonaparte wander through Europe.
’Tis the height of the Paris “season,” and with its gayly dressed crowds and splendid equipages, the Avenue des Champs Élysées wears a festive, smiling air. Bright shines the sun, gilding with its rays the dome and turrets of the Tuileries, the terraces and statues, the obelisk of Luxor, and sending back the waters of the fountains in showers of glittering diamonds, while far in the distance the massive outline of the Arc de Triomphe looms lofty against the clear blue sky. Carriages, horsemen, and pedestrians, a countless throng, are on their way to and from the Bois de Boulogne; but one alone attracts universal attention. A tall and graceful figure clad in a dark green habit, and above whose head there floats a snow-white plume, she sits proud and erect upon her splendid thoroughbred. Paris sees with admiration, and in every mouth there is but one question, “Who is yonder fair equestrienne, who sits so splendidly, who rides so fearlessly?”
“Tis Eugénie de Montijo, Comtesse de Téba.”
Born in Spain in 1826, in the province of Granada, her early days were passed among the picturesque scenery with which the pen of Irving has made us familiar. Her father, the Count de Montijo and Téba, was a grandee of Spain, and from him she inherited many titles of nobility. Washington Irving, who was then in Spain, knew her mother, Maria Manuela Kirkpatrick, and was a frequent visitor at her house, where he soon made friends with the little Eugénie; and in later years, when she was dazzling Europe with the costliness of her costumes and the splendor of her court, he recalled with interest and amusement the many times he had held upon his knee the future empress of the French, “when she was an alert, dark-eyed little girl, doubtless very happy to be entertained with such stories of her native land as he could tell her.”