Thus, at the outset, we have a letter from the Empress en route for Suez, which shows her grammar and orthography as much at fault as those of the fine ladies of Queen Anne's time, and which is sadly like what Henrietta of France might have written to Charles I.:—
'Plus on aura besoin de force plus tard, et plus il sera nécessaire de prouver au pays qu' on a des idées et non des expédients.' "Amuse-toi" (is her advice to her husband) 'il faut se refaire un moral, comme on se refait une constitution affaiblie, et une idée constante finie (sic) par user le cerveau le mieux organisé.'
Altogether Eugenie does not come off badly in the published correspondence.
Of the chapter on Napoleon's mistresses we need say nothing except that it will disappoint the prurient reader. Marguerite Bellanger, who first fathered a son on him, and then (after being managed by the président du cour, poor M. Devienne) confessed she had cheated him, and Miss Howard, are the only two who come to the front; the latter, by the way, appears to have received in the course of two years five and a half millions of francs—good interest for having paid 'the Prince's' debts when he was in England. It is unsafe to state anything about the ex-Emperor's private property. The 'facts' have been contradicted and re-asserted; but there they are, in this little pamphlet, with full details, sixty-three millions of francs, including the accounts with Baring of London, with Kindlet of Vienna, with Funder and Plitz of St. Petersburg, with Berg von Dussen of Amsterdam, and Jecker in Mexico, and Brown Brothers of New York. What he had in the French funds the author, of course, professes himself unable to tell; but en revanche he gives (in the chapter headed ce que coûtaient les impérialists) the whole of the enormous civil list, a great deal of which was (as is proved by marginal notes on the documents) paid by the Emperor over and above the allowance, without the intervention of the Ministry.
We all know how persistently Pierre Bonaparte begged for money, and how recklessly money was wasted on affairs like the Prince Imperial's baptism, but the amount expended per month on men like Baron Jérome David, M. Granier de Cassagnac, and others of the 'vendus' is prodigious; and we are told that of the actual total we can form no notion, the usual plan of payment having been one which may be recommended to our own 'man in the moon'—a trusty go-between used to breathe on the glass of the office door, and then write with his finger the sum which he was authorised to draw, whereupon it was paid without question.
Of the Cabinet Noir, where letters were opened, according to a system adopted in France at any rate since Louis XIV.'s day, we have all heard a good deal. The actual letter-stealers were certain concierges with whom the postmen were instructed to leave all letters addressed to certain persons. These letters were then carried off to M. Saintonier, 18, Rue Les Cases, who opened them, had them copied, if necessary, and, if possible, returned them in time for the next delivery. Among the copies found is a remarkable letter from Ducrot, at Strasburg, to Trochu, dated 1st December, 1866, setting forth the dangerous state of feeling in Germany, and pointing out that Prussia can get ready 600,000 men and 1,200 guns far sooner than France can muster half the number. Ducrot animadverts severely on the 'stupid vanity' which makes his countrymen think they can choose their own time, and get their Great Exhibition well over before they begin. He says, too, that the frontier swarms with Prussian agents, and that the feeling between the Moselle and the Vosges is far less French than people fancy:
'They are sons and grandsons of the men who, in 1815, petitioned the Holy Alliance that Alsace might be re-united to Germany.... The Prussians are working here just as I am told they did in Bohemia three months before their war with Austria began.'
Surely the Emperor was warned; and that, in spite of all warnings, he should have acted as he did, justifies as well as explains the scorn which all parties alike have manifested for him.
These papers, in fact, remind us that imperialism was based on surveillance publique, on a spy system so vast as to embrace lists of all the 'dangerous men,' of whatever views, throughout the Empire. The prop of this system was the terrible power of arbitrary arrest given to all prefects by the 10th article of the Criminal Code. How the nation which boasts of being exceptionally logique reconciles such an article with the principles of 1789 we cannot imagine; but it is clear that a Government, resting on such a basis, could only stand by its prestige. At whatever cost, it was necessary last July 'to do something,' and at Sedan the ex-Emperor judged rightly that he had better fall into Prussian hands than trust to feelings which even his uncle had not ventured to rely on.
Persigny, according to the letters contained in the Papiers Secrets, was Louis Napoleon's Strafford. As late as December, 1867, he memorialises the Emperor at great length on the state of the nation, and exclaims against the folly of concessions: