One day, however, we had a great alarm; at seven o'clock she was not yet back. I anxiously sent to her sisters, the Queen of Naples and the Countess of Trani, to whom she occasionally paid surprise visits. She was not there. To crown all, she had succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the inspector who was charged to follow her at a certain distance. We had lost the Empress in the midst of Paris! Picture our mortal anxiety!
I was about to set out myself in search of her, when suddenly we saw her very calmly appearing.
"I have been gazing at Notre Dame by moonlight," she said. "It was lovely. And I came back on foot along the quays. I went among the crowd and nobody took the least notice of me."
I remember that her Greek reader, at that time Mr. Barker, and her secretary, Dr. Kromar, expressed a wish to see something of the picturesque and characteristic side of Paris; and I took them one evening to the central markets. When we had finished our visit, I invited them, in accordance with the traditional habit, to come and have a plate of soupe à l'oignon in one of the little common eating-houses in the neighbourhood. Delighted with this modest banquet, they described their outing to the Empress next day and sang the praises of our famous national broth, which she had never tasted.
"M. Paoli," she said enthusiastically, "I must know what soupe à l'oignon is like. Mr. Barker has given me a most tantalising description."
"Nothing is easier. I will tell the people of the hotel to make you some."
"Never! They will send me up a carefully-prepared soup which won't taste in the least like yours. And I must have it served in the identical crockery. I want all the local colour."
Here I must make a confession: as I had it at heart (it was a question of patriotism, nothing less) that the Empress should not be disappointed, I thought it more prudent to apply to the manager of the hotel, who, kindly lending himself to my innocent fraud, prepared the onion soup and sent to the nearest bazaar for a plate and soup-tureen of the "local colour" in which the imperial traveller took so great an interest. The illusion was perfect. The Empress thought the soup excellent and the crockery delightfully picturesque; true, we had chipped it about a little!
The Empress's only visit to Paris was a short one. As I have said, she had decided that year to air her melancholy on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The projected cruise embraced a number of calls at different harbours along the Côte d'Azur; and she asked me to accompany her.
We left Paris on the 30th of December for Marseilles, where the imperial yacht lay waiting for us, commanded by a very distinguished officer, Captain Moritz Sacks von Bellenau; and we were at sea, opposite the tragic Château d'If, on the 1st of January of the year 1898, which was to prove so tragic to Elizabeth of Austria. I offered her my wishes for happiness and a long life. The Empress seemed to me sadder and more thoughtful that morning than usual: