Sinking back upon the cushions, Eugénie for an instant raised her veil to catch a last glimpse of the Louvre. As her eye rested on that fatal colonnade, where Catherine de’ Medici and the king had stood on the night of St. Bartholomew, a little ragamuffin, seated on the stone foundation of the golden railing, started up, shouting, “There is the empress!”
A group of artisans, lounging at the corner, vaguely caught the cry and came forward. But M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, with admirable presence of mind, caught the urchin, whirled him round and sent him sprawling in the roadway, saying furiously:—
“Ah, you are crying ‘Vive l’Empereur,’ are you? That will teach you to hurrah for the Bonapartes, when the Republic is proclaimed.”
The group on the sidewalk approved this laudable sentiment. M. de Lesseps sprang inside, with the empress. The cab was whirled away; and thus ended for Eugénie de Montijo the empty dream of greatness, by which she had been so long beguiled.
Leaving Paris, she embarked on board the yacht Gazelle, and was conveyed to England, where Victoria and the royal family received her with great kindness, and placed at her disposal the beautiful country residence of Camden Place, Chiselhurst. Here she was joined by the Prince Imperial, and later by Louis Napoleon.
“Camden Place, Chiselhurst, 1871. A gentleman sixty-three years of age, a lady, and a youth of fifteen are resting in the pleasure grounds of an English rural mansion. This does not seem much. But this gentleman is he who, a twelvemonth since, was emperor of the French nation, and the most powerful monarch in Europe. He is a student and a writer—as well as an actor—of history, which must have taught him the value of an imperial title. Can he think it worth the pursuit or possession, having once sat upon a throne which was perhaps not so agreeable as his present seat on the Chiselhurst garden-chair? If he desires, for himself or for his son, to leave Camden Place, or a similar abode, and go back to the Tuileries Palace, we can only say it is a matter of taste.”
But Louis Napoleon was not destined to behold again the Tuileries Palace. On the 9th of January, 1873, he died, consoled by the presence of the empress, but not of the Prince Imperial, who, summoned from Woolwich, arrived too late to see him alive.
All the hopes and affections of the widowed empress then centred in her son, and his recent fate cannot but be remembered. He joined the expedition to Zululand, and on the first of June, 1879, perished by the javelins of the savages while scouting with a few companions. On the 10th of July, the body arrived in England, and on the 12th the final ceremony took place at Chiselhurst. It was a soldier’s funeral, but there was no glare and glitter of martial splendor.
Mind rather than matter was pre-eminent in giving voice to the public sorrow. At the head of the military pageant, whose every feature was pervaded with a genuine pathos, marched the cadets of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, with arms reversed; then, to the solemn strains of the “Dead March,” the Royal Artillery Band; then the cross before the gun; and then the gun, drawn by six dark-brown horses by whose sides rode mounted artillerymen. The coffin above the gun was wrapped in the English and French flags. The sword of the prince, his belt, and sabre-tache were placed upon it; while on a cushion were the great cross and ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
By the side of the coffin walked the pall-bearers, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Connaught, the Crown Prince of Sweden and Norway, and M. Rouher on the left. The Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, Prince Leopold, and the Duke of Bassano on the right. Behind the coffin came the prince’s favorite horse, “Stag,” caparisoned in the white and silver starred trappings of the imperial stable, and led by M. Gamble, the faithful retainer who had attended the baptism of the prince, and who now followed his coffin. Next came the chief mourners, Prince Napoleon and his sons, Prince Victor and Prince Louis; Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Prince Joachim Murat, Prince Napoleon Charles Bonaparte, and Prince Louis Murat.