The only one who appeared unconscious of the significance attributed to his visit was the Emperor himself. Perhaps he knew that whatever people might think, he was not going to risk the life of even one of his soldiers in order to gratify the wild hatred of France against his German neighbours; perhaps, also, he was merely amused by the bright scene that stretched itself before his eyes; or, maybe, he was thinking that it would have been a good thing had his own subjects showed such demonstrative joy whenever he showed himself in the streets of his own capital. It was something new to him to see the whole population of a great city let loose without police surveillance—at least, none that was apparent; a vast multitude who seemed only eager to catch one of his smiles.
Later on, however, a few discordant notes were heard, even before the Tsar had left Paris. For one thing, the most rabid Radicals reproached Nicholas with having called personally on M. Loubet, President of the Senate, and M. Brisson, President of the Chamber of Deputies. These visits were not in the programme of the journey, and people said that by making them the Emperor was identifying himself with the political opinions of these personages, which were held in suspicion by the Socialists, who had already become very powerful at that time.
On the other hand, the Conservatives were quite indignant to hear that at the reception given in his honour at the Hotel de Ville, Nicholas II. had cordially shaken by the hand a municipal councillor, who in long bygone days had made himself conspicuous by sending an address of congratulation to Hartmann, one of the assassins of Alexander II.
Then, to crown all, the leaders of French society and of the Faubourg St. Germain, who had been invited to meet the Russian Sovereigns at a lunch given by Baron and Baroness de Mohrenheim, felt sadly chagrined that neither the Emperor nor the Empress had thought fit to address a single word to any of them, though there were present such great ladies as the Duchesse d’Uzès, the Duchesse de Luynes, and Madame Aimery de la Rochefoucauld.
But all these criticisms proceeded from the few. The many and the masses felt more than gratified at the unexpected honour which had fallen upon France. The enthusiasm was especially great after the toasts exchanged at Chalons between the Tsar and the French President, and to give an idea of the illusions which at that particular moment seized the whole French nation, with but very few exceptions, I will reproduce here a letter which I received one or two days after the departure of the Russian visitors from a political man who, by virtue of his official position, ought to have been able to judge of the consequences which this effervescence of the French public mind might have in the future, and which proves under what strange misconceptions some people were labouring:
“I am not at all of your opinion when you tell me that you deplore the facility with which the French nation has prostrated itself at the feet of the Cossack. What wind coming from the perfidious shores of Albion could have made you say such a thing? First of all, he is not a Cossack, this young Emperor of yours. On the contrary, he produces, together with his fair Egeria, an immense impression of greatness, seen, as he has been here, in the full sunlight of our intensive French civilisation, with his little girl in the background. As for the French crowds, they haven’t, believe me, prostrated themselves before him; they have only exchanged a long and passionate embrace with Russia; that is, with a Europe independent of the Prussian Empire. In this triumphal march of an Imperator towards our pseudo-Republican capital, the oldest and most experienced crowned foxes the world has ever seen have found their Tarpeian rock. Your young Imperial ephebe has emerged out of it admirably. Nothing that he has done has been out of place; he has shown simplicity, cordiality, good taste, tact, and everything, in short, that he ought to have done, without one single false note to mar the concert. In his place, William II. would only have shown the weight of his sword and invited us to test it. Nicholas II. is above all this, and has proved himself of stronger stuff. It is because, in the present case, the comedians, who generally act in presence of Her Majesty Humanity, are put to shame by another and newer spectacle, which is far more powerful than the old scene upon which they had been used to play since time immemorial.
“In spite of everything, real life will overthrow the false limits into which one has tried to confine it, and the Treaty of Frankfurt will share the fate of those of Paris in 1815 and of Westphalia. It was only real life that could have been strong enough to accomplish this superb effort, and to set itself up on the ruins of that old mischievous diplomacy which has produced that snake with three heads called the Triple Alliance.
“Only two nations could possibly have performed this miracle, and could have risen against the slavery in which, until now, Europe has been held in the bondage of the infernal policy of Prince Bismarck. He is the only real Cossack in the sense we generally attribute to that word, the Cossack before whom France, even when he vanquished her, has refused to prostrate herself, and against whom she has risen with sufficient courage and sufficient strength to deliver from his yoke both Russia and the dynasty of Romanoff, and to snatch it from the sphere of Prussian influence. Our two nations have married each other without the help of any notary, and without the need for any written treaty, and their union means peace, real peace, against general war which Bismarck wanted to transform into a status quo. This is civilisation in the highest sense, and Europe owes it not to the fact that France has prostrated herself before Russia, but to the energetic manner in which the former has tried and succeeded in establishing its military strength, and redeeming its lost military prestige.”
I have transcribed this curious letter in its entirety, as it can give, better than anything else, an idea as to the state of feeling which was prevailing in Paris in the autumn of the year 1896, when, for the first time since the fall of the Empire of the Napoleons, a foreign monarch was officially received with enthusiastic welcome within the doors of the capital. The enthusiasm was as false as the visit itself, but it cannot be denied that it gave greater stability to the Republic and considerably discouraged its enemies.
Nevertheless, nearly a whole year passed before M. Faure returned this memorable visit, and accomplished his passionate desire by being welcomed on Russian shores in his capacity of head of the French Republic. He arrived at Peterhof on a French man-of-war, escorted by a numerous and powerful squadron, and was received with a cordiality that must have considerably increased any illusions he may have had concerning the sincerity of the Russian alliance. St. Petersburg showed unusual enthusiasm, and the Imperial family treated him with a familiarity that must have ravished his parvenu heart. As he wrote to one of his friends in Paris, he held on his knees the little Grand Duchess Olga, to whom he had brought the most splendid present of dolls any Imperial child ever received, and the fact of having thus nursed in his arms the youngest member of the Romanoff family evidently appealed to his feelings. He began to think himself equal to all these crowned heads with whom he found himself so unexpectedly thrown into contact, and to believe himself the real Sovereign of France.