Читать книгу Young Lady Randolph - Rene Kraus - Страница 7

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Like a stately vessel, with sails again swelling, Clarissa Jerome steered through the flood tide of her new life in Paris. She no longer stood in the shadow of her dazzling husband. Nor was she forced to listen quietly to the foreign songbird, La Patti. Now the belle of Palmyra was herself the beautiful foreigner. One of the first belles Américaines to settle down in Paris, her grave sweetness and her complete self-assurance enchanted the capital of fashion.

During the Second Empire Paris was indeed a women’s city. Every beauty was welcome. Few questions were asked. No one inquired where Madame came from. Why, except for her harsh Castilian accent to which she determinedly clung no one could guess where Mademoiselle de Montijo herself had come from. Her deceased father, it was rumored, had been Spanish, perhaps even a Spanish count. Her clever, matchmaking mother was undoubtedly English. Nothing was certain about the daughter but the fact that she had been married in Notre Dame to become Empress Eugénie of France. Her age? No one was indiscreet enough to discuss a secret of state.

In this enchanting city of ageless women Clarissa Jerome enjoyed a second youth. No doubt, she fully deserved it. She was in the prime of life. Her beauty was ripening. The Grecian bend she had affected in New York was forgotten. Now she walked with the graceful dignity of a woman who is aware that she is the center of constant attention, and who does not find this in the least embarrassing. Moreover, she belonged to the select few mothers whose charm is only increased when they appear in the company of their budding daughters.

During the first months in Paris Clarissa kept her eldest daughter, who was subsequently to become Mrs. Moreton Frewen, constantly at her side. The slight young girl, the only blonde in the family, with her gaily sparkling blue eyes set in a delicate oval face, made an effective contrast to her maman, a brunette with a figure of classic proportions.

Jennie, much to her regret, was still considered too young to take part in fashionable life. Paris, after all, was stressing dignity, overstressing it, indeed, under the rule of an upstart Emperor of a distinctly charlatanesque quality. The impromptu amusements, young people’s cotillions, the innocent and noisy gaiety of cheerfully expanding New York would have been entirely out of place.

Mr. Washburne, the American Ambassador, was delighted to introduce his beautiful compatriot at court. Napoleon III liked American visitors, and assiduously tried to make them his friends. To his speculative spirit the mighty new country was a fairyland, where money was being produced by some strange alchemy. Perhaps he wanted to steal the formula, perhaps his sympathy was based on the restless and serious curiosity of his mind, much given to those scientific experiments and innovations in which America excelled. Under this regime Clarissa found success easy. She took up her residence on the Champs Elysées (already the pulsating heart of Paris) where the rents were still only a third of those on Fifth Avenue. With true Jerome speed she made her house one of the leading salons. Due to Mr. Washburne’s amiable assistance, it became first a center of the diplomatic set, and soon a much coveted rendezvous of court society. Only poor Jennie felt that she was being relegated to a second childhood. She complained that only the faint echoes of the Tuileries fêtes reached her. “They were eagerly listened to by my curious and greedy ears,” she reminisced.

Her life in Paris seemed definitely a decline from the early triumphs at home. Where was the day when she had been hoisted on to the winning “Kentucky”? Where was the night of the Louis-Quinze ball at the Schermerhorns? It all seemed so far away, only a memory, veiled in nostalgia.

But suddenly Paris became thrilling for her, too; it was more exciting than anything she had known before.

The Exposition Universale, late in 1867 (the year of the Jerome ladies’ debut in Paris), opened to Jennie the gates of the great world. Clarissa could not bear to leave the house on the Champs Elysées, and see Jennie pressing her dark face with the passionate black eyes against the window. The belle Américaine was at heart an American mother to whom her daughter was the most important thing in the world. With a faint shudder she felt that in Jennie the volcano, which she had always been forced to suppress in herself, slumbered. Then she smiled, and suggested lightly: “Do you want to come with me to the Exposition? Mr. Washburne is giving a reception for American visitors.”

For the first time Mrs. Jerome graced the American Ambassador’s party with both her elder daughters. Subsequently they took part in all the festivities of the Exposition. The Jerome ladies danced at the ball in honor of the Tsar of Russia. They sat at the table of honor at the gala for the German sovereigns, the assembled Kings of Prussia, Bavaria, Wuerttemberg. They had the privilege of exchanging a few pleasantries with King Leopold of Belgium, the old fox of Europe. They had a short conversation with an oversized gentleman, a man with the build and features of a giant, contrasting amazingly with his high-pitched voice. His name was Bismarck.

The memory of the Louis-Quinze ball at the Schermerhorns’ no longer caused Jennie nostalgia. The merrymaking bankers and brokers and their bejeweled ladies playing at being courtiers in elaborate uniforms and ball gowns carefully copied from old paintings were now replaced by the company of real crowned heads who, it is true, looked a good deal less royal. Uncle Ward McAllister would not have liked some of their table manners. Look at the way the old King of Prussia emptied whole mugs of wine in one gulp!

There was only one insurmountable obstacle on Jennie’s way: the doors to Eugénie’s receptions in the Tuileries were closed to her. Mrs. Jerome was a welcome guest. But the Empress firmly declined to have young girls in her entourage. She referred to some medieval court-order setting an age limit for admission to Her Majesty’s presence. It came in handy to the woman entre les deux ages. Jennie felt deeply hurt by her exclusion. Yet she admired Eugénie, if only at a distance.

A short time before all France had hated their Spanish Empress for having driven her husband into the seduction and betrayal of Archduke Maximilian of Austria. The Mexican adventures seriously compromised Napoleon III, Maximilian’s faithless sponsor. Actually Eugénie, as was generally known, had devised the plot. But her wit atoned for her political sins. Some of her quips became proverbial. At a levée, for example, the Empress sent to Princess Anna Murat, who had refused to marry the elderly Lord Granville, the following message: “Tell her, please, that after the first night it is all the same whether a man is handsome or ugly. After a week you won’t even notice the difference.” Such witticisms, spreading like wildfire through the capital, reconciled the Parisians with the beautiful perpetrator of the Mexican tragedy.

The crowds took their Empress again to their volatile hearts. Soon the pathways in the Bois de Boulogne were packed with cheering people most anxious to see Eugénie on her morning drive. The audience was largely feminine. Duchesses and concierges were alike eager to have a look at the most successful woman on earth. Perhaps a quick glance might divulge something of her secret.

An American girl, trotting on her pony through the Bois, beseeched her stern English governess: “Please let us stop until she passes. Perhaps she will notice us.”

The Empress, however, as she drove past, stared straight ahead, creating around her a vacuum. She was ready to do her best for her occasionally loyal subjects. But a highly bred Spanish woman cannot easily forget all the mob hatred she had been exposed to. She was alone, and proud of her solitude. By coincidence her faraway glance fell upon a dark girl on a white pony. “Vive l’Impératrice!” exclaimed the girl. Her peach-colored cheeks flushed. She blushed with shame at her impossibly conspicuous behavior.

But the Empress smiled. She lifted her white-gloved hand, and waved to the girl. Indeed, as her aumont proceeded, she turned around, a rare and entirely un-Imperial gesture, and her hand rose once more, like a fluttering bird.

When the Empress entered the salon bleu of her private apartment, the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece across her left shoulder, and a high tiara of pearls and diamonds in her coiffure, she immediately recognized her young visitor. “It was good of your dear mother to bring you,” she smiled. “She told me that you had seen me in the Bois.”

This first meeting between Eugénie and Jennie did not take place at an official reception. It was at a petit lundi, a party for the Prince Imperial, who was generally called Loulou. These informal affairs in the late afternoon, sometimes lasting into the evening, were more sought after than the magnificent state balls, in the hurly-burly of which the individual guest was apt to be submerged.

Ladies, gentlemen, and young people stood at attention, ready to curtsy when Her Majesty passed. Only a little gentleman in his ’teens, stoutish, broad-nosed, with brown locks and curled lips somewhat too tightly pressed against each other, and with a questioning look in his earnest blue eyes, did not interrupt his game of Bagatelle. Loulou’s mother seemed not to mind his rude behavior. Napoleon, otherwise indulgent and deferential toward his wife, could be very angry when she tried to apply rigid methods of education to his son. The father was helpless in his blind partiality for the boy. But in the Empress’ place an elderly spinster whispered menacingly to Loulou: “Hadn’t you better get up, Monseigneur?” Her whisper had a marked English accent. Miss Shaw, the Prince Imperial’s governess, was a disciplinarian; she was not afraid of Napoleon’s wrath. The little Monseigneur jumped up, his middle fingers pressed against the seam of the trousers of his white dress uniform. He exaggerated the obeisance. Toward his mother he was often sullen.

Eugénie had to be diplomatic, even with her only child. She overlooked his unsuitable behavior. Smilingly, she turned her full attention to Jennie, the newcomer. She stretched out her beautiful right hand with its long slim fingers. It was a rare honor.

Jennie kissed the tips of the Imperial fingers. In her embarrassment she asked the childish question: “Isn’t that tiara frightfully heavy?”

“Frightfully!” Eugénie admitted. She looked at her Imperial tiara in the mirror. “Frightfully heavy!” she repeated.

Jennie sensed an inexplicable tension. She attributed it to her gaffe! “Heavens!” she exclaimed. “One does not ask a crowned head questions! Forgive me, Your Majesty!”

Loulou giggled.

“I think I shall forgive you!” Eugénie said playfully. She was amused by Jennie’s embarrassment. She felt a little touched by the ingénue’s innocence.

Once more she stretched out her hand. She drew the young girl nearer to her. But as Jennie advanced a step or two, her black eyes fixed on the beautiful Empress, admiring yet gauging her at the same time, both ready and reluctant to offer her own small hand, Eugénie, a wise woman, sensed: This is no ingénue. This is a child without childhood. She is as ageless as I. “Shall we be friends?” she asked. Resolutely, Jennie stretched out her brown hand. Their clasp was at once tender and firm. The friendship between the Empress and the young girl from Brooklyn lasted until Eugénie’s death half a century later, when she was ninety-four.

“Have you a governess, too?” Loulou entered the conversation. He was entirely oblivious of court ceremonial.

“She left me yesterday,” Jennie regretted. “My mother said the first time I was received in the Tuileries”—deep curtsy before the Empress—“I could consider myself grown up.”

“Miss Shaw will leave me too, very soon,” Loulou replied hopefully. Then he straightened himself, stood at attention, like a real soldier, and mimicked with the hint of a smile on his curly lips, “The Prince Imperial needs military guidance, papa insists. Le brave général Frossard assumera mon éducation.” He dropped into French. “The general has already presented himself to me. ‘Now, Monseigneur,’ he said, ‘you will have to be obedient and to work hard at your lessons.’ Funny words, aren’t they?” Loulou chuckled. “ ‘That is not so sure,’ I answered. Maman always says No to whatever I want. But papa always says Yes, and besides I have my own will. That makes two to one. Of course, I must inspect the army if I shall once be Emperor of France. But why learn lessons? A soldier must learn shooting! ... However,” he added, becoming a bit more modest, “if I make good in my lessons, I am getting some money for the poor. And one can’t let the poor go without money, can one? Moreover, they say the honor of my uniform is affected if I refuse studying ...”

When military questions were at stake, Loulou could only speak French. Here his boyish heart was involved. He was not really interested in anything but in soldiers, tin ones or real ones, in military bands, flags and drums. He had cherished his uniforms, already when he was so small that the tarboosh he wore was almost bigger than himself. He was a real soldier by nature. After watching a puppet play, glorifying his father’s deeds in the Austrian war, he summed up his impressions: “But this show was not at all amusing.” Conversely, he was deeply impressed when, one day, an immensely tall grenadier mounted guard in front of his door. This was the real thing. “You must have eaten a great quantity of soup,” he said admiringly.

Loulou made his own strict rules of conduct. He had been brought up to speak both English and French. He used English with Anglo-Saxon guests, but never when French people were present. Yet when he met Jennie, he broke this rule. To make things easier for her, he chatted in English an hour or so, until his governess, Miss Shaw, interrupted him. “Monseigneur, votre chapeau!” This was the signal to retire. With military precision the boy obeyed. He whispered to Jennie in a hurry “Next Monday, Mademoiselle, is Monday again. Petit lundi. ... I mean.” And he rushed out of the room.

Now every Monday was petit lundi. Jennie became, in a way, the second child in the house, in this immense, uncomfortable, glorious and historic building, the Tuileries. It puzzled her that in the midst of all this splendor there was no bathroom and that there was a distinct smell of drains.

Assiduously, Loulou guided her through the old castle, introducing her to the ghosts who had haunted it since the days of its builder, Catherine de Medici. To prove his perfect familiarity with ghosts, the young soldier challenged the apparitions to games of hide and seek. He was a high-strung boy, this son of a brilliant make-shift Emperor and the obscure Spanish woman sharing the Most Christian Throne of France. He had to shout because he could not express himself. Only once did he try. He was confined to bed with measles, acquired from a dancing partner at a children’s festival in Compiègne, the Imperial summer residence. From his sickbed he addressed a letter to Mademoiselle Jeannette Jerome. The letter was penciled, written by an awkward hand, but in perfectly correct English: “My dear Mademoiselle: Will you, please, forgive my negligence in the last days? I am suffering from a slight indisposition, I got the measles from a young lady with whom I unfortunately danced a mazurka. I should really not dance with any other girl.” No signature was attached.

The Prince Imperial recovered within a few weeks. His parents celebrated the event with a banquet. “Has Mrs. Jerome been invited?” the Prince Imperial inquired. “With ... her daughters? ...”

“They will be invited ... immediately,” the Emperor promised.

To express the high good humor and the anxiety with which Loulou looked forward to the banquet, he thrashed his best friend, little Conneau, the son of the Emperor’s personal physician. By way of reconciliation the Prince Imperial presented his comrade with a gold dagger. But when the evening came he refused to change into dress uniform. Instead the boy threw himself on to his bed. Not even le brave général Frossard could extract Loulou from behind the barricade of quilts and pillows. He did not want to see any girls, the Prince Imperial shouted.

For Jennie it was a memorable evening. She had now outgrown the petit lundis and was officially admitted to the Imperial Court. Besides, she wore her first evening gown with a train. This unaccustomed addition had embarrassed her a little as she mounted the grand staircase. The guests did not form a procession, as was the custom at other courts. They elbowed their way to the salle de réception, where they were supposed to gather in a semi-circle. They did not, however, observe the prescribed geometrical form. They hastened back and forth, forming small groups, whispering furtively, and laughing much too innocently.

“These French cannot possibly keep in line! They simply cannot!” Count Hatzfeld, then a dashing young attaché at the Prussian legation in Paris, approached the ladies Jerome with this Prussian pleasantry. He was a faithful visitor at their salon, never presenting himself without a too large bunch of roses. “Bei uns ... We line up in serried ranks when we are commanded to court functions,” he addressed Jennie, and took the liberty of expressing his delight in seeing Mademoiselle for the first time at an official reception.

Jennie nodded sweetly, and decided henceforth to call Count Hatzfeld “Monsieur Bei Uns.” The nickname survived throughout the decades. Its origin should not be forgotten.

The conversation stopped as the doors were flung open. “Sa Majesté, l’Empereur!” was announced. Napoleon III walked slowly down the stairs. His carefully staged entrance was the only moment where one saw His Majesty without the eternal cigarette between his lips. He had first taken up this truly French habit for reasons of democratic appeal. Now he was so consumed by chain smoking, his last passion, that his lips ached, he sometimes complained, if he could not burn them a little with the last puff of a ciggi. In spite of the constant pain caused by his progressive disease, he held himself erect. His private conversation was a mixture of affected bonhomie and genuine kindliness. He looked like a great actor, impersonating the Emperor of France.

A few minutes after his entry the court-marshal announced: “Sa Majesté, l’Impératrice!” Silence fell upon the whispering groups. A grave question lay unspoken on everyone’s lips. How would Eugénie be dressed? On this particular evening, Jennie recollected, Her Majesty, a resplendent figure, appeared in a green velvet gown, with a crown of emeralds and diamonds, spiked with pearls, on her “small and beautifully shaped head.” Napoleon and Eugénie passed slowly along the circle of curtsying and deeply bowing guests, and then proceeded to the dining room.

The dinner was consumed at top speed. After precisely three-quarters of an hour the Emperor rose, and everyone had to follow him into the ball room, where their Majesties held cercle. Napoleon III preferred to address the savants, some of whom were his frequent guests. On this evening he enjoyed animated conversation with Pasteur, Sainte-Beuve and Théophile Gautier. At ten o’clock he retired. The lamps in the Emperor’s study burned on until dawn. In these last years of his rule, crouched over a desk littered with maps, plans, memoirs and documents, he dreamed the dream of the French Empire, the supreme power on the Continent. But the stone in his bladder drove him crazy with pain, and so he made a mess of his dreams.

Whereas Napoleon was as reticent in society as was possible without impairing his scrupulous politeness, Eugénie was loquacious and talkative. His amiable and unpretentious attitude in private contrasted with her hot-tempered often whimsical impulsiveness. This outwardly incongruous antithesis held them together in an iron grip. They were so directly opposed to one another that they could not do without each other. After almost twenty years of marital struggle, they had become inseparable. Where their tastes and necessities clashed, they found compromises. If he had to transact business until dawn, she was in the habit of keeping some of her friends with her until the small hours.

“It is impossible to get the Emperor to go to bed,” she smiled to Mrs. Jerome. “Won’t you stay with me a little longer? For an informal chat.”

Clarissa understood very well that the Empress had taken a fancy to her daughter Jennie. She herself was only asked to remain as chaperon, she realized. It did not hurt a bit. She was proud that Jennie’s time was beginning.

The Empress led the way to her private apartments on the first floor. To be admitted there was a great distinction for her American friends. Jennie’s excitement mounted. At the same time she had a curious feeling of calm satisfaction. Eugénie led her guests by a small private staircase to her personal quarters. She guided them through the ten exquisitely furnished rooms. On the walls hung portraits of her most intimate women friends. “La Duchesse de Cadore....” she explained. “La Duchesse de Persignan.... La Princesse Malakoff.... Madame du Morny. ... I need not introduce La Princesse Anna Murat.... And you do know my Comtesse Anna Walewska....”

“Beautiful!” said Clarissa to each portrait.

Jennie devoured every single picture. Would she be a Princess Murat one day? Or a Madame de Morny? Or a Duchess?

Tea was served in Eugénie’s mauve salon. A plebeian looking small, dark, bony, elderly maid, obviously a peasant woman, put down each cup most unceremoniously on the jewel-studded little tea table. Everything about this woman—with the exception of her white cotton gloves—was dirty. Her voice was repulsive. She spoke a vulgar Castilian, a coarse exaggeration of Her Majesty’s own accent.

“You may go to bed now, Pepita,” the Empress said with a touch of timidity.

The answer was a flood of Spanish noises. A little embarrassed, Eugénie translated for Mrs. Jerome’s benefit: “Pepita says she does not go to bed before having tucked me up. Why should she? she says. Her husband has been snoring for hours.”

“Her husband... ?” Clarissa answered, to say something.

“Yes, her husband,” the Empress replied indulgently. “He was a famous bullfighter in his day. In Barcelona. Then he married my Pepita. Thus he became a colonel in the French army. Now he wants to be a general. Since the Emperor refuses this promotion ... for the moment, anyway ... the dissatisfied husband is taking his revenge by snoring. He knows that my good old Pepita has some influence with me. But he does not know how little influence I have with the Emperor.” Eugénie smiled. At that time of night she had to keep on talking, no matter about what, as long as she could pour out a hundred words a minute.

“So you are the Empress’ treasurer!” Jennie watched the uncouth figure closely. Everyone in Paris knew Pepita by this nickname. She had earned it by the adroitness with which she extracted astronomic bribes and tips.

Ugly old Pepita did not bat an eyelash under Jennie’s scrutiny. She herself appraised her mistress’ young guest with unabashed curiosity. Then she burst out once more. It was again a rush of coarse sounding words. Again the Empress translated: “Pepita says that you are beautiful, very beautiful, Jennie, and the people will believe that you are still much more beautiful than you really are, because you have a beautiful soul, too, and an exquisitely beautiful brain. You will be a great Queen if you don’t bother about the crown. The crown is only an empty symbol, my gracious chambermaid believes. But you shall never marry a torero. They die so soon, and if they do not die, they go crazy, Pepita says!”

The Empress’ treasurer left the room. Probably she would waylay the ladies downstairs, as they were leaving. A quarter of an hour later, however, when the Jeromes departed, Pepita did not show herself.

No sooner was the peasant woman gone than Eugénie turned to Jennie: “Would you like to see my bedroom?”

Jennie expected Cleopatra’s glittering workshop. What she actually saw was an enormous, almost empty white-painted room. A simple white bed stood against the wall. Above it hung a colossal oil painting of the Prince Imperial. Jennie suddenly realized that Loulou had not attended the banquet. She had not missed him.

The Empress put her fingers to her lips. “Loulou sleeps in the next room.” She breathed the words. It was less than a whisper.

“Why don’t you leave me in peace? Don’t you see that I am asleep?” a voice, just breaking, shouted through the closed door.

“Be quiet, Loulou!” his mother answered. She tried to sound determined, but she could not. Loulou with his shocking manners and his torn and tortured heart must have been anxiously listening all the time. Perhaps he could hear Jennie speaking.

The Empress accompanied her guest as far as the staircase. Apologetically she said, as Jennie curtsied deeply: “He is confused. You are his first love. He does not know what it is all about. Poor boy!”

Jennie curtsied a second time and a third. Then she repeated politely: “Poor boy!”

She did not know what it was all about, either. Love? Certainly that was the affection one felt for father, the deep, if a little superior tenderness for her mother, the pleasure she had in her sisters’ company. Love meant fidelity to the family. Throughout these years in Paris, Jennie knew no more of love than that.

Her dark, passionate looks were deceiving. Her only passion was to become one of those celebrated beauties with whom the Empress chose to surround herself, and whose portraits adorned the walls of Eugénie’s boudoir. Subsequently, Jennie made friends with every single one of them. As if they were descending from their frames, the Duchesse de Cadore and Madame de Morny, Princess Malakoff and Anna Walewska stretched out their arms to take the enchanting American newcomer to their hearts.

She found a great friend in la belle Mélanie, the Countess de Pourtalès, of whom no one in Paris could speak without adding: “Elle est étonnante.” In this woman “whose bewitching face and fascinating manner won all hearts,” Jennie afterwards recalled, she encountered, perhaps, her last formative influence. La belle Mélanie was a leading lady in politics. The society of the Second Empire was torn by the conflict between Legitimists, the die-hards faithful to the House of Bourbon, and Bonapartists, the adherents to the new dynasty, who preferred to call themselves Imperialists. Countess Pourtalès achieved the miracle of becoming the social link between both camps. Her husband, being of Swiss origin and not too deeply concerned with the rivalries between French traditionalists, had come to Paris as a follower of the Lilac banner. But under his wife’s influence he did not mind accepting Napoleon’s cause into the bargain. Their friends were in both camps. “From the charm of Mélanie’s beauty and personality,” Jennie recalled, “and due to the vivacity of her conversation, one could easily understand the sway she held over the whole society.” Mélanie reigned supreme over the fashionable set for so many years that envious rivals finally christened her “la vieille garde.” Nevertheless, as a grandmother she was still charming and much beloved. Her example taught Jennie how little years matter.

Also there was the amazing Princess Mathilde, “that woman” to Eugénie, the second lady of Paris to the rest of the world. Jennie called her “undoubtedly the most brilliant and intelligent woman of the Second Empire.” She was the cousin of Napoleon, and had done the honors for him in the Elysée, in 1848, when he was President of the Republic. Her mother was a Princess of Wuerttemberg, the King of Italy a relative. Her marriage to Count Anatol Demidoff, Prince of San Donato, had ended in a world scandal. After suffering countless indignities and cruelties on his part, she separated from him, supported by her uncle, Tsar Nicholas I, who forced his subject, Count Demidoff, to give her a large income, amounting, it was said, in the course of sixty years to twelve million francs.

Hence Princess Mathilde could easily maintain her own private court in her palace in the Rue de Courçelles, to which the collet-monté society and the entire Faubourg (St. Germain) flocked in greater numbers and with more avidity than to the Tuileries itself. The reason was that Princess Mathilde’s palatial salon was much less rigidly ruled than the court was of necessity. Her house was the only one that upheld the traditions of the great eighteenth-century salons, in which wit and art mingled with royalty and power. The reputation of her salon was world-wide. Ranking foreigners were generously admitted. Some young and pretty Americans in Paris, with Jennie as their leader, met in the Rue de Courçelles such men as Dumas, Sardou, and Théophile Gautier.

Eugénie, tolerating no other deity, hated the competition. But at the pinnacle of her fame and glory, she had, from a distance, to watch the Princess Mathilde steal her thunder. In November 1869, the Empress ventured upon her journey to Egypt to open the Suez Canal. She was received as the fairy-queen, the new Cleopatra. The opera Aida which Verdi had composed in Her Majesty’s honor, had its première in Cairo. The event had originally been planned for a Sunday. But the performance had to be put off until the following day since the Most Catholic Empress was a rigid sabbatarian.

On this same Monday, however, when Eugénie heard from all sides that Aida was but a shadowy imitation of her own splendor, on probably the happiest day of her life, in Paris the petit lundi’s were resumed, but in the Rue de Courçelles, no longer in the Tuileries. Mathilde, recalling previous days in which she acted as Napoleon’s hostess, found that one could not let Loulou mope along without a little social pleasure. Moreover, the Empress’ nieces, Mesdemoiselles d’Albe, had implored Princess Mélanie to resume the dear old custom.

Jennie met Loulou again. He bowed very politely, but only at a distance. His personal guard of honor, now always in his wake, clicked heels in almost Prussian fashion. The young man was no longer Loulou. From head to toe he was the Prince Imperial. He only danced with his cousins, the Demoiselles d’Albe. When during the cotillion, Jennie happened—by an unfortunate coincidence, of course—to lose her left shoe, he picked it up and returned it to her with a bow. He did not speak. But he did not dance again that evening. He retired much earlier than had been expected. He excused himself. But he had to train with his regiment on the Champs de Mars early in the next morning.

The two met again at what was fated to be the last of the Emperor’s famous parties (or “séries” as they were called) at Compiègne. On account of the Emperor’s ever worsening state of health, and due to his increasing political worries, the party was on a much smaller scale than usual. However, among those invited were the ladies Jerome, now intimates of the court. The fête extended over three days. The first day was spent in hunting, shooting and dancing. There was a grande chasse.

On the second day an expedition was organized to see the Château de Pierrefonds, Napoleon’s favorite castle. M. Viollet-le-Duc, the celebrated architect, showed the party around. Dinner was served in the ancient armory of the castle. The Emperor presented each lady with a souvenir in the form of a small dagger. In spite of the terrible strain, both physical and mental, he tried to seem in high spirits. Indeed, he achieved a semblance of his imperturbable bonhomie. The evening ended with a concert. Princess Metternich, the wife of the Austrian ambassador, sang risqué Viennese music-hall songs; no one, she was confident, would understand the words. The Prince Imperial followed her on the improvised stage. His berçeuses and bergeries disclosed a pleasant and cultivated voice. Jennie listened attentively.

But on the third day the guests were exhorted to be discreet in their amusements, and not to disturb His Majesty. A Cabinet Council was taking place in Napoleon’s private apartments. The Prince Imperial participated for the first time. He was entitled to this privilege. Now, it was common opinion, he would soon undergo his baptism of fire. After the council, the general farewells ensued. Napoleon, very exhausted, but holding himself erect, and even managing to smile, had still a last surprise for his guests. There was a grand lottery in which all the tickets won prizes. The Emperor stood upright near two great urns from which the prizes were drawn, and as each guest received one, he wished him bonne chance. Shrewdly Jennie observed that the numbers could not be blind. A little juggling must have been going on, since her mother and Mr. Washburne drew valuable pieces of Sèvres china, whereas the presents for the younger people were less costly. She herself won an inkstand shaped like a handkerchief, filled with gold napoléons. Handing her the prize, the Emperor remarked: “J’espère, Mademoiselle, vouz n’oubliez pas les Napoléons!”

A few days later the dashing Count Hatzfeld visited, as usual, Mrs. Jerome’s Sunday reception. “I never saw His Majesty in better spirits than he was at Compiègne,” he snarled. “And God knows where he will be next year at this time!” he added, chuckling venomously.

Jennie jumped up from her chair. She felt like shouting something frightful to the insolent Prussian face. But all she said was: “Let me get you another cup of tea.” She smiled at the clean-shaven, monocled monster. What a pity there was not a single drop of poison in the house!