THE EMPEROR AT BOULOGNE
(By our own Eye-Witness.)
Boulogne has for some weeks presented the miserable aspect of a sort of daylight Vauxhall, or the "behind the scenes" portion of a theatre at rehearsal time. The "Emperor" having been expected nearly a month ago, the "authorities" who had made him captive in 1840 determined to captivate him in 1853 by turning the town into a series of "bowers of bliss" by the aid of at least 1000 scaffolding poles and some millions of yards of evergreens. The "authorities," having formed themselves into a sort of committee of stage management, proceeded to get up the scenery and properties a month ago; and during that month, the equinoctial gales have been shifting the scenery and distributing the properties in a most vague and impartial manner. Several "triumphal arches" have been for the last three weeks staggering in a sort of drunken state in the middle of the principal thoroughfares. The festoons of "evergreens" have been helplessly hanging about in a condition which shows that the immortality of their greenness is a mere myth, for we never saw a collection of used-up tea-leaves looking so thoroughly "done brown" as the long lines of deceased box, dangling about in the blustering breath of Boreas. The rain, as if mistaking them for real "tea-leaves," and hoping to get still some good out of them, has kept them in almost a perpetual soak, and the pavements have been strewed with the dying or dead asparagus in that feathery state it assumes when the asparagus has all gone, and the plants have taken it into their heads to put forth a rather graceful but unprofitable luxuriance of green-stuff.
We must give every credit to the "getting up" of the "Emperor's" reception, for we certainly never saw so many "set scenes" employed in a single act, and when we remember that the act was a mere farce, the expense incurred seems still more remarkable.
The "properties" were also on the most elaborate scale, and the pasteboard eagles were equal to any owl we ever saw in the palmiest days of Der Freischülz. Immense "troops of auxiliaries" and "supernumeraries" in military uniforms were engaged expressly for the occasion, and as these had to be billeted on the inhabitants, there were instances of a quiet English family or two having to entertain a dragoon, while in one case the choice between a colonel, or two lieutenants, or four privates was offered to a quaker, who was residing at Boulogne for retirement.
There could be no objection to any amount of obsequiousness in which the Boulonnais themselves might indulge, but surely a "loyal address" from the English to any sovereign but their own was somewhat superfluous. Nevertheless such a document was got up and was actually signed by Doctor Somebody, Mrs. Somebody, Miss Somebody, Miss Anna Maria Somebody, Master J. Somebody, and a lot of little Somebodies or Nobodies, who we suppose had a family meeting with Papa or Mamma in the chair, to appoint a deputation to "go up" with the piece of flatulent flattery to the "Emperor." We can excuse the address of the matelottes, presented by a very venerable matelotte, who read to the sham Napoleon the very same address that she had read to the real Napoleon "forty years ago, in the maturity of her beauty" (what a beauty she must be in 1853 if she was full-blown in 1804); but we cannot understand what pretext there could be for a few English old women and children expressing their "loyalty" to the present "Emperor."
Their "Majesties" entered the lower town, having been "washed, just washed in a shower," which came on as they approached the Sous-Préfecture, and a vast crowd of umbrellas was all that could be seen by the assembled multitude. There was all the usual humbug of receiving the keys, which are never used, and would of course refuse to fit the lock, which in its turn would inevitably decline to act, and the Imperial couple were then dragged about in the rain, under the drippings from the festoons and through the theatrical arches, one of which was designed after the Arc d'étoile, being itself in reality an arc de toile—or arch of canvas. No sooner had their "Majesties" left the town than our old friend Boreas began to puff and blow through all the streets, which he very rapidly cleared of all their "thousand additional lights," sending the paper lanterns through the air on all sides, and whisking away the evergreen festoons, which were instantly turned into skipping ropes by the delighted gamins. Thus, like everything else, the whole affair of the "Emperor's" visit to Boulogne was speedily blown over.