That last feeling was very general, and I found it prevailed among all the foreigners then at Paris. Two or three days after my return to the capital, I called upon an old friend of mine, Madame Jules Lacroix, an extraordinary old woman, a Russian by birth, whose sister was the widow of the novelist Balzac, and who had made her home in France ever since her marriage with M. Lacroix, the brother of the famous novelist known under the pseudonym of “Bibliophile Jacob.” Madame Lacroix presided over one of the pleasantest salons of the time; within its walls one was always sure to meet some important and interesting persons. She had been a great friend of Morny, and though her family had been Legitimists—she used to boast of her alliances with the Bourbons through Queen Marie Leszczinska, her aunt many times removed—all her sympathies were with the Napoleonic dynasty. She possessed a villa in St. Germain, where she used to spend her summers, and was there at the time the war broke out. I went to dine with her in the endeavour to find out something about the events that had brought about the present crisis.
Madame Lacroix received me with effusion, and talked of little else than the war, and of the consequences it would have. To my great surprise, however, I did not find her by any means so enthusiastic as I had expected, rather she was subdued and anxious. She related to me that her great friend General Castelnau, one of the aides-de-camp of the Emperor, who was later on to share his captivity, did not look at the situation with over-confident eyes, and that he had given her to understand that he had some apprehensions as to the ability of the army to come out victorious from the struggle it was about to enter.
“The Emperor is more ill than one supposes,” added Madame Lacroix, “and should his strength fail him, who can take his place at the head of the army? Indeed, it would be far better if he did not attempt at all to lead it, because his presence in Paris will be more necessary than at the frontier. Suppose a revolution breaks out here, who is to confront it? The Empress is too unpopular through her clerical leanings to inspire confidence in a nation that has lost every respect for priests and their protectors.”
Several episodes were then related concerning the deliberations which had taken place at St. Cloud during the momentous days before the solemn question of war or peace had been decided. It seems that when the first telegrams from Berlin announcing the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern for the Spanish throne had arrived in Paris, the Duke de Gramont had immediately sent them to the Emperor, though it was in the middle of the night, and that in a long conversation which he had subsequently held with his Sovereign, he had insisted on the affront such a candidature represented for France. Why it was an affront probably the Duke himself could not have properly explained.
On the contrary, the Empress, who was afterwards to be represented as having done all that was in her power to decide Napoleon to declare war against Prussia, had been far from urging him to it, if we are to believe what I heard on that day at Madame Lacroix’s. It seems that when it was found to be impossible to resist the public clamour for revenge against this insolence of Prussia, as the chauvinists, who held the upper hand at that moment, were pleased to call the Hohenzollern candidature, the Empress was very much upset, and to General Castelnau, who saw her come out from her room with red eyes and in great agitation, she said that she felt very anxious and very much afraid at the responsibility that was to become hers when she would be left as Regent alone in Paris. The General then advised her not to allow the Prince Imperial to accompany his father to the frontier, upon which she exclaimed: “Oh! I can’t keep him here, he will be much safer amidst the army than with me!” Singular remark for a mother to make.
Altogether it seems to me, from what I had opportunity to hear, that at this crisis of her life Eugénie entirely lost her head, and that from its very outset allowed outward circumstances and impressions to obscure her clear judgment. I have been told that she was extremely superstitious, and firmly believed that what she once described in one of her conversations with an intimate friend as “the obstinacy” of the Emperor in not imposing the weight of his authority upon King Victor Emmanuel, to oblige him to abandon his secret ambitions to annex to his crown the territory of the Holy See, would prove fatal to him as well as to the Bonaparte dynasty. She was a fervent and devout Catholic and, in addition to her misgivings as to the future, feared the wrath of God.
I was not present when the Emperor left St. Cloud and looked for the last time on his home of so many happy years, but I am told that nothing could be sadder than this departure, so very different from that other occasion, some ten years before, when, amidst the hurrahs of the Parisian population, he had started for the Italian frontier to take part in a struggle the end of which had been so glorious. And yet the present war was a great deal more popular than had been that of 1859. Not only was it desired, but almost imposed on the Sovereign, by a nation who would never have forgiven him had he not acceded to her wishes. And yet, when Napoleon took leave of his wife, his Ministers, and the members of his household, on that eventful 28th of July, though few eyes were dry in bidding him good-bye, the country over which he had ruled for eighteen years did not unite in wishing him God-speed. On the eve of the greatest catastrophe of modern times, an atmosphere of foreboding was already making itself felt in the sadness of that early departure.
When the Sovereign had gone, a period of anxious waiting ensued. Paris got wilder and wilder, became more and more riotous. One of the Empress’s familiar friends called upon her one day at St. Cloud, before she had left that residence to return to the capital, and thought it his duty to draw her attention to that fact, and to express to her his apprehensions that the excitement might have serious consequences should any reverse happen to the army. She replied with vivacity: “Oh, not only in case of reverse, also in case of victory, the nation only wants a pretext to get rid of us.”
These words are remarkable, and, so far as I know, no one had voiced such sentiments before; they reveal on the part of the Regent a state of discouragement which explains, perhaps, her total collapse when the dreaded crisis at last occurred; maybe it was this belief which led to the indifference with which she submitted to a destiny which she had accepted as foreordained, and against which she had recognised the utter futility of rebelling.
She was leading a feverish existence, which left her little time to think over her difficult position, or to make plans concerning her own future. After having tried to imbibe the enthusiasm with which she was told the declaration of war against Prussia had been received in the whole of France, she was now realising how little grounds there had been for it. Before even the earliest news of the first disasters of this deplorable campaign had been brought to her, she had prepared herself for the worst, and believed in the worst, though when that worst came it was to surpass all that she had most dreaded or imagined.