The last four weeks of her abode in France the Empress Eugénie spent at the Tuileries. Those were days of confusion and distress. The series of defeats which culminated at Sedan had already begun, and a proclamation had appeared declaring Paris in a state of siege. Still the empress was hopeful. “She thought with a lady’s romantic ideas about military possibilities,” says a narrator, “that everything could be retrieved by a grand coup.”
But then came the news of the emperor’s surrender at Sedan. Eugénie was up all night; council after council was held, as new reports and scraps of information arrived. Finally it was decided that she should ride on horseback through the streets of Paris, and herself proclaim to the unpopular legislature its dissolution. This resolution, however, was never carried into effect, for lack of a riding-dress! A plain, black habit, with the cross of the Legion of Honor pinned upon her breast, was what she had decided to wear. Was it a fatality that out of the three hundred and sixty dresses then hanging in their wardrobes at the Tuileries, the needed one was missing? A few days before there had been a general stampede of servants, who had gone off, carrying great quantities of imperial property, and the dark riding-dress, which the empress now sought, had probably been among the spoils of her domestics. There was only one habit to be found, and that was neither black nor plain. It was a dress of gorgeous green, embroidered with gold, and designed to be worn with a three-cornered Louis XV. hat, the costume of the imperial hunt at Fontainebleau. This was pronounced, with evident justice, to be too theatrical, and the enterprise was consequently abandoned.
“What grotesque mischances mar great destinies and shift potent purposes!” The lack of a spur by the messenger whom Louis XVI. had sent to call M. de Machault to the post of prime minister, delayed his departure, and thus—by giving Madame Adelaide time to write, in favor of her friend the Count de Maurepas, to that feeblest of monarchs who, not being able to withstand the strongly worded appeal of his strong-minded aunt, recalled his messenger as he was mounting his horse,—caused an entire change in the policy of the ministry of the kingdom.
And now “the lack of a petticoat—on the testimony of Thiers himself, who spoke of it afterward—brought about the expulsion of a dynasty; for had the woman, pathetic in her misfortune, ridden out among the multitude, like Elizabeth to Tilbury fort, the chivalrous sentiment of Paris would have acclaimed her, and the history of a people would have been written in less lurid colors.”
Upon the fourth of September, the mob so long feared made its appearance. The infuriated insurgents to the number of one hundred and fifty thousand crowded the Tuileries gardens, the Place de la Concorde, and the Champs Élysées, shouting, “Down with the Empire! down with Bonaparte! death to the man of December!”
At two o’clock in the afternoon, Signor Nigra, the Italian ambassador, entered the empress’ apartment, to tell her that the time for flight had come. “You have not an instant to lose,” he said. “The revolutionists are entering the palace by the Place du Carrousel.”
And now for the first time Eugénie’s courage wavered; but she mastered her emotion, and giving her hand to the ambassador, with a melancholy flash of her old imperial grandeur, said calmly, “I will take leave of our friends.”
“The door of the white drawing-room was thrown open, and the empress appeared for a moment on the threshold—an inexpressibly touching figure, in her simple black dress and white collar. She made a courtesy and waved her hand, trying hard to smile, while many—not all of them women—were sobbing aloud. Then, with gentle persuasion, Prince Richard Metternich, the Austrian ambassador, drew her back, and the door was closed again.”
Through the magnificent galleries of the Louvre, hung with the masterpieces of Rubens, Van Dyke, Leonardo, Poussin, Claude, and the imperishable dynasties of art, fled the Empress Eugénie and her few faithful followers.
The square of St. Germain L’Auxerrois was empty. A cab stood by the curb. The veiled empress and Madame Carette, her lady-in-waiting, escorted by Signor Nigra, Prince Metternich, and M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, approached it.