This emancipation was in itself a curious phase. In her way Eugénie was just as anxious as the Emperor to order her household upon the same lines as those of the other great Courts of Europe. Especially with that of Windsor she had been deeply impressed, when with the Emperor she visited Queen Victoria. But she was not endowed by nature with that reserved dignity which is a necessity to regal rank, and the result stultified her efforts. The Empress, when a girl, had enjoyed far more liberty than girls had at the time of which I am writing. This lack of control led her sometimes to forget her rank as Empress, and she found herself drifting into her old habits of saying everything that occurred to her, or of allowing her sympathies and her antipathies to be seen by a public always eager and ready to criticise.
She had but few friends, and after the death of her sister, the Duchesse d’Albe, she felt very isolated, and in need of one into whose ear she might confide her sorrows and her joys. She did not get on with the members of the Imperial Family, and she had been very much hurt at the attitude taken up in regard to her by the Princess Clotilde. Eugénie had received the Princess with open arms, but had met with repulse from the very first moment Clotilde arrived in France. Then, again, Eugénie’s relations with Prince Napoleon became of the worst, perhaps owing to the fact that there had been a day, before her marriage with the Emperor, when those relations were very near. The antagonism towards her which the only cousin of her husband chose to adopt, wounded her to the quick, and instead of trying to overcome it with tact and apparent indifference, she did her best to accentuate his animosity, until open warfare resulted, and the strained situation became a general topic of gossip.
With Princess Mathilde, the sister of the Prince, the Empress was, also, not on intimate terms, although apparently they bore one another affection. The Princess was perhaps the most remarkable among the many fascinating women with whom the Second Empire will remain associated. Surpassingly beautiful in her youth, she retained her good looks, and notwithstanding her embonpoint, possessed a personality of great dignity. She was certainly a grande dame, despite her numerous frailties.
She was clever, kind, brilliant in more senses than one; very talented, she liked to surround herself with clever people, who, in their turn, were glad to have her appreciation. There had been a time when the question of a marriage between her and her cousin, Prince Louis Napoleon, had been discussed, but the latter’s chances were so uncertain, that neither Mathilde nor her father had had the courage to run the risk of uniting her destiny with that of the Pretender.
The Princess married M. Demidoff, and very soon regretted it; so deeply that she tried to break the bonds. Thanks to the intervention of the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, a separation was arranged under very favourable terms for Madame Demidoff, who, by permission of the government of Louis Philippe, settled in Paris. She did not mix with politics, and only tried to create for herself a pleasant circle of acquaintances and friends. Unfortunately, she possessed in addition to a superior and cultivated mind, a very ardent temperament, and gossip soon became busy with her name, especially after her liaison with Count de Nieuwekerke became a recognised fact.
When the Revolution of 1848 brought back to France the heir to the Bonaparte traditions, the Princess Mathilde at once hastened to his side, and showed herself to be the best of friends. It was the Princess Mathilde who presided at his first entertainment at Compiègne, as well as at the Elysée, where he was residing when in the capital, and it was at her house that the Prince President, as he was called, met for the first time the lovely Spaniard who was later to become his wife.
The Princess Mathilde did not like the marriage, in view of the fact that she might have occupied the place which this stranger took, as it were by storm; she would hardly have been human had she done so. But she was far too clever to show her disapproval, and it is related that when the question arose as to who should carry the train of the new Empress, Mathilde at once declared that she would do so if the Emperor asked her, much to the astonishment and perhaps to the scandal of those who heard her. She bore no malice, and thought herself far too great a lady to imagine that by whatever she might do she would fall in the estimation of others, or that it would be derogatory to her position.
But though she consented to receive the future wife of her cousin when first she entered the Tuileries, and though she tried hard to establish friendly relations with her, all her efforts failed, partly because the young Empress felt afraid of the brilliant Princess, and of her sharp tongue and brusque manners, partly, also, because Mathilde did not care for the people who formed the entourage of the Sovereign, and never felt at her ease at the many entertainments given by Eugénie. She thought them either too dull or too boisterous.
Mathilde was never so happy as when in her own house in the Rue de Courcelles, where all that was distinguished in France considered it an honour to be admitted, and where she could live the life of a private lady of high rank. She was too frank to conceal what she felt, and too honest to flatter the Empress, or to find charming what she considered to be the reverse. Though she disapproved of many things that her brother, Prince Napoleon, did, she did not care to blame him publicly, and thus she maintained a neutral attitude in regard to both. Eugenie’s airy disposition and love of amusement in any shape or form prevented her from finding pleasure in the company of the Princess Mathilde, whom she thought exceedingly dull, and whom she accused of fomenting the accusations which her enemies showered upon her. So long as the Empire lasted there was no sympathy between the Empress and her husband’s cousin, and it was only later, when both ladies had realised the emptiness of worldly things, that their relations became intimate and affectionate, so much so that when Mathilde Bonaparte died, it was Eugénie who watched beside her, and whose hands were the last she pressed before expiring.
The best friend that the Empress Eugénie had among the members of the Imperial Family was the Princess Anna Murat, who married the Duke of Mouchy, to the horror of all the Noailles family, and the chagrin of the Faubourg St. Germain generally. Princess Anna was one of the loveliest women of her time, though perhaps not one of the brightest. Still, she had a warm heart, a kindly disposition, and a sincere attachment for the Empress. She had very nice dignified manners, if sometimes stiff, and was perhaps the only really grande dame, with the exception of the Princess Mathilde, among the many ladies with whom Eugénie liked to surround herself.