Читать книгу France from Behind the Veil - Catherine Radziwill - Страница 7

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When the news of the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern to the Spanish throne reached me, together with a letter from my Ambassador urging my return to Paris, I was staying in a little village on the coast of Normandy. Though I started at once for the capital, I could hardly bring myself to believe in the possibility of a war between France and Prussia. The thing appeared to me to be quite impossible, especially in view of a conversation I had had with the Emperor immediately after the results of the Plebiscite of May, 1870, had become known. I had ventured to offer to the Sovereign my congratulations upon the new triumph he had obtained. Napoleon III. seemed also delighted, and though it was most unusual for him to be demonstrative, yet he did not, on that occasion, attempt to hide what he was feeling, going so far as to tell me that the results of the Plebiscite in his opinion “had not only consolidated the dynasty, but also had done away with the legend that represented him as desirous of a foreign war in order to add to his prestige.” “No one can say so at present,” added the Emperor, “because, after France has so positively affirmed its allegiance to the Empire, it would be madness for me to risk losing popularity through a war which, even if victorious, would always materially impoverish the country.”

Napoleon III. did not seem to have noticed that M. Rouher had at once observed that the vote of Paris had been distinctly hostile to him, and that as things were organised, it was Paris which overthrew dynasties and governments.

But that wisdom which is born of attentive observation of the events of the world, as well as of outward and sometimes insignificant circumstances that lead on to their development, seemed to be absent from the thoughts of the principal politicians who, at that particular moment of her history, held in their hands the destinies of France. Neither the Emperor nor his responsible advisers saw farther than the victory of the moment, and they all rejoiced together at the new triumph which they had won for themselves, as well as for the party which they represented.

A few days after the Plebiscite, I happened to be calling on a social celebrity, the Countess de Castiglione, about whom so much has been written and said. Nature had been generous to her in many ways, but she was not destined to keep her fairness much longer than a rose its freshness. At the time of which I am speaking, she had barely reached her thirtieth year, and was already the ghost of her former self. I don’t think I have ever met a woman who faded so quickly; I have often thought about it, and come to the conclusion that her beauty was so dazzling that it obliterated the imperfections it possessed, just as the Neapolitan or Sicilian sun prevents us from noticing aught else but the brilliance of the places it lights up with its rays. At the first glance, her loveliness literally took one’s breath away, as it did mine the first time I saw her in 1868, when already she was going down hill. I can therefore imagine what she must have been at the time she first startled Paris by her glorious complexion and extraordinary beauty, and conquered the senses if not the heart of the Emperor.

Madame de Castiglione, without being the very clever woman she has been represented by some, nor the stupid one she has been described by others, was possessed of an intelligence that was certainly above the average, but completely spoiled, her severe critics said, by an inordinate vanity, which prostrated her at the feet of her own beauty, and made everything in her life subservient to it. She firmly believed that she had only to show herself to conquer, and in a certain sense it was quite true, until the numerous victims of her charms learned to know her well. She had been sent to France by her cousin, the great Cavour, with a mission to influence Napoleon III. in favour of the cause of Italian independence. In a certain sense she succeeded, though much of her success can be attributed to the personal sympathies of the Emperor as well as to the rash promises of which had been so generous in regard to the various secret societies and associations with which he had been connected in his youth. But he was a master in the art of flattery, and it pleased his fancy to allow the young and lovely woman to think that she, and she alone, had been the means of Italy attaining her liberty. Madame de Castiglione thereafter took herself au sérieux, and believed she was a political heroine.

Later on, however, clouds came to obscure the horizon of her successes; the sensation caused by the lovely Italian very soon vanished, and though she was talked about a great deal in society, though painters still raved about her, and old men devoured her with their eyes, whilst young ones sighed at her feet, though women grew green with envy when they saw her enter a room, certain it is that her success was neither a long nor a permanent one. As a dream she flitted through that brilliant, frivolous society of the Second Empire, and as a dream she vanished into the darkness of the night that overtook it.

The curious thing in the career of Madame de Castiglione was the way in which she used to come and go, the eclipses her personality underwent, and the notoriety that, now and then, arose in regard to her. There had been a day when she was asked to leave France altogether, but then she very soon returned to it, more arrogant, more haughty, more than ever ardent in resuming a political rôle. But she did not like Napoleon III., whom, perhaps, she did not forgive for the light-heartedness with which, after all, he had treated her. Though she would never have owned to it, she knew in her inmost heart that he had taken her as he would have taken any other pretty woman weak enough to have been dazzled. Madame de Castiglione was then in the glory of her youth and beauty, and she may well be forgiven. Principles she had few, religion and morals still less, or she would not, upon more occasions than one, have forgotten the great name she bore, or the high social position she enjoyed, and accepted, for instance, the banknotes of Lord Hertford, and of many others.

A curious trait in that celebrated woman’s character was her pride in what others generally hid from the eyes of the world. A characteristic anecdote can be told on this subject. One day, as one of the very few friends she had left was talking with her of that period of the Empire when she had been its brightest star, suddenly Madame de Castiglione exclaimed: “I shall take care that even after I am dead the world shall know how great I was whilst it lasted”; and with a cynicism such as she alone would have been capable of, she rang the bell, and turning towards the maid who had appeared in answer to it, “Luisa,” she said, “montrez à Monsieur, la chemise de nuit de Compiègne.” And when an elaborate garment all batiste and lace was brought to her, she added: “I shall leave instructions to bury it with me.”

To come back to what I was saying at the beginning of this chapter, I had called upon Madame de Castiglione just after the Plebiscite, and naturally the conversation turned towards that event. The Countess listened very seriously to all the remarks exchanged between the two or three people who were present in the room, and at last surprised us considerably by saying: “You are all mistaken; the Plebiscite will not consolidate the dynasty. Up to now neither Italy nor Prussia thought that it could maintain itself à la longue in France, where it was firmly believed that no political regime was able to last beyond a few years. The results of the Plebiscite have proved that this conviction was an erroneous one; and the consequences will be that both these nations will use their best endeavours to inveigle the Emperor into a war. It is very well known that France is unprepared. Such an event will naturally throw her back into a state of revolution, and for a time will wipe her off the European slate.”

No reply was made to this extraordinary remark, but when we went out together with Alphonse Rothschild, who had been one of those who had heard her, he turned to me and said with the clear insight of a financier, combined with the cleverness of a diplomat and his experience of the world: “How that woman hates the Emperor.”

And now as I was hastening back to Paris on that July day of the year 1870, I remembered both the remark of the Baron and the tone of animosity with which the Countess de Castiglione had spoken on that occasion, and something like apprehension suddenly seized me, apprehension I did not know of what, but of a danger which I felt rather than saw, swooping down upon this brilliant society of the Second Empire, which I had grown to like so much and so well.

I reached Paris late in the evening of July the 16th, twenty-four hours after war had been declared, and was struck by the extraordinary aspect of the people who crowded the boulevards. Much to my surprise they were singing the forbidden Marseillaise, and altogether they presented an excited appearance. The cafés were full, and from time to time someone would stand up, and scream loudly: “À Berlin!” whereupon the mob took up that cry, and vociferated in its turn, “À Berlin! À Berlin!” All Paris seemed to have gone mad, but already, in spite of what has been said to the contrary, remarks were heard hostile to the Emperor and to the government, who, it was said, had not soon enough tried to avenge the insult which France had received, but had done their best to prevent the outbreak of a war which, as someone remarked in my presence that same evening, “was indispensable to the dignity and the greatness of the country.” To attempt reasoning with such folly was out of the question. I stopped the cab which had brought me from the station, and, alighting near one of the cafés on the boulevards, sat down under the pretext of having something to drink, but in reality to observe the scenes that were taking place. All the windows and balconies were full of people looking down in the street below, and watching the movement of the crowd, listening to its warlike cries. And later, when the theatres were over, the boulevards seemed to fill even more than they had been before. Women appeared wearing the national colours, and above the noise, the shouts, the movements of that great agglomeration of human beings, resounded again one great acclamation, one immense cry: “À Berlin! À Berlin!”

When at last I reached our Embassy, I found that consternation prevailed; not at the war, though everybody agreed that anything more foolish than the circumstances that had led to it had never been seen, but at the weakness displayed by the government, which certainly ought to have checked that exuberance of public opinion, and prevented manifestations that at any moment might turn against itself. Then surprise was expressed at the disorderly attitude displayed by the troops when starting for the frontier, as already one or two regiments had done that morning. No one ventured to make a prediction as to what the future was holding in reserve, but serious apprehensions were entertained concerning the ultimate fate of the Emperor and of his dynasty.

That last feeling was very general, and I found it prevailed among all the foreigners then at Paris. Two or three days after my return to the capital, I called upon an old friend of mine, Madame Jules Lacroix, an extraordinary old woman, a Russian by birth, whose sister was the widow of the novelist Balzac, and who had made her home in France ever since her marriage with M. Lacroix, the brother of the famous novelist known under the pseudonym of “Bibliophile Jacob.” Madame Lacroix presided over one of the pleasantest salons of the time; within its walls one was always sure to meet some important and interesting persons. She had been a great friend of Morny, and though her family had been Legitimists—she used to boast of her alliances with the Bourbons through Queen Marie Leszczinska, her aunt many times removed—all her sympathies were with the Napoleonic dynasty. She possessed a villa in St. Germain, where she used to spend her summers, and was there at the time the war broke out. I went to dine with her in the endeavour to find out something about the events that had brought about the present crisis.

Madame Lacroix received me with effusion, and talked of little else than the war, and of the consequences it would have. To my great surprise, however, I did not find her by any means so enthusiastic as I had expected, rather she was subdued and anxious. She related to me that her great friend General Castelnau, one of the aides-de-camp of the Emperor, who was later on to share his captivity, did not look at the situation with over-confident eyes, and that he had given her to understand that he had some apprehensions as to the ability of the army to come out victorious from the struggle it was about to enter.

“The Emperor is more ill than one supposes,” added Madame Lacroix, “and should his strength fail him, who can take his place at the head of the army? Indeed, it would be far better if he did not attempt at all to lead it, because his presence in Paris will be more necessary than at the frontier. Suppose a revolution breaks out here, who is to confront it? The Empress is too unpopular through her clerical leanings to inspire confidence in a nation that has lost every respect for priests and their protectors.”

Several episodes were then related concerning the deliberations which had taken place at St. Cloud during the momentous days before the solemn question of war or peace had been decided. It seems that when the first telegrams from Berlin announcing the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern for the Spanish throne had arrived in Paris, the Duke de Gramont had immediately sent them to the Emperor, though it was in the middle of the night, and that in a long conversation which he had subsequently held with his Sovereign, he had insisted on the affront such a candidature represented for France. Why it was an affront probably the Duke himself could not have properly explained.

On the contrary, the Empress, who was afterwards to be represented as having done all that was in her power to decide Napoleon to declare war against Prussia, had been far from urging him to it, if we are to believe what I heard on that day at Madame Lacroix’s. It seems that when it was found to be impossible to resist the public clamour for revenge against this insolence of Prussia, as the chauvinists, who held the upper hand at that moment, were pleased to call the Hohenzollern candidature, the Empress was very much upset, and to General Castelnau, who saw her come out from her room with red eyes and in great agitation, she said that she felt very anxious and very much afraid at the responsibility that was to become hers when she would be left as Regent alone in Paris. The General then advised her not to allow the Prince Imperial to accompany his father to the frontier, upon which she exclaimed: “Oh! I can’t keep him here, he will be much safer amidst the army than with me!” Singular remark for a mother to make.

Altogether it seems to me, from what I had opportunity to hear, that at this crisis of her life Eugénie entirely lost her head, and that from its very outset allowed outward circumstances and impressions to obscure her clear judgment. I have been told that she was extremely superstitious, and firmly believed that what she once described in one of her conversations with an intimate friend as “the obstinacy” of the Emperor in not imposing the weight of his authority upon King Victor Emmanuel, to oblige him to abandon his secret ambitions to annex to his crown the territory of the Holy See, would prove fatal to him as well as to the Bonaparte dynasty. She was a fervent and devout Catholic and, in addition to her misgivings as to the future, feared the wrath of God.

I was not present when the Emperor left St. Cloud and looked for the last time on his home of so many happy years, but I am told that nothing could be sadder than this departure, so very different from that other occasion, some ten years before, when, amidst the hurrahs of the Parisian population, he had started for the Italian frontier to take part in a struggle the end of which had been so glorious. And yet the present war was a great deal more popular than had been that of 1859. Not only was it desired, but almost imposed on the Sovereign, by a nation who would never have forgiven him had he not acceded to her wishes. And yet, when Napoleon took leave of his wife, his Ministers, and the members of his household, on that eventful 28th of July, though few eyes were dry in bidding him good-bye, the country over which he had ruled for eighteen years did not unite in wishing him God-speed. On the eve of the greatest catastrophe of modern times, an atmosphere of foreboding was already making itself felt in the sadness of that early departure.

When the Sovereign had gone, a period of anxious waiting ensued. Paris got wilder and wilder, became more and more riotous. One of the Empress’s familiar friends called upon her one day at St. Cloud, before she had left that residence to return to the capital, and thought it his duty to draw her attention to that fact, and to express to her his apprehensions that the excitement might have serious consequences should any reverse happen to the army. She replied with vivacity: “Oh, not only in case of reverse, also in case of victory, the nation only wants a pretext to get rid of us.”

These words are remarkable, and, so far as I know, no one had voiced such sentiments before; they reveal on the part of the Regent a state of discouragement which explains, perhaps, her total collapse when the dreaded crisis at last occurred; maybe it was this belief which led to the indifference with which she submitted to a destiny which she had accepted as foreordained, and against which she had recognised the utter futility of rebelling.

She was leading a feverish existence, which left her little time to think over her difficult position, or to make plans concerning her own future. After having tried to imbibe the enthusiasm with which she was told the declaration of war against Prussia had been received in the whole of France, she was now realising how little grounds there had been for it. Before even the earliest news of the first disasters of this deplorable campaign had been brought to her, she had prepared herself for the worst, and believed in the worst, though when that worst came it was to surpass all that she had most dreaded or imagined.

Before she decided to leave St. Cloud, she went for a walk in the park with one of her ladies in waiting. On the last evening she gave way to the apprehensions that were torturing her soul. The sun was setting after a glorious day, and the Imperial residence had never seemed so beautiful, nor so peaceful; a peace in such contrast to the agitation of the country, that the Empress could not refrain from remarking upon it. Her companion tried to cheer her with words of hope and encouragement: “No,” replied Eugénie, “I have no hope left, and if I could still wish for something, it would be to stop the course of time; to have a few more hours to look upon St. Cloud and its gardens; but see,” she added, and pointed with her hand towards the sun that was slowly disappearing below the horizon, “see, this is how our prosperity is also setting, and who knows what will happen in the night that is falling upon us!”

And covering her face with her hands, she who was still Empress of the French sobbed bitterly.