Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878

Meanwhile, the preparations for the marriage were proceeding vigorously. The future empress and her mother had been installed in apartments at the Élysée. The household of the royal bride was already formed, including the princess of Essling as chief lady-in-waiting, and the Count (afterward Duke) Tascher de la Pagerie as head-chamberlain. The nuptial ceremony took place on the 30th of January. The bride's dress was composed of white velvet, with a veil of point d'Angleterre, the time being too short to have one of point d'Alençon manufactured. The details of the ceremony were closely copied from those of the wedding of Napoleon I. and Marie Louise, and the state-coach was the same that had been used at the coronation of the great emperor. It was a magnificent vehicle, covered with gilding and ornaments, and so heavy that the eight fine horses that drew it were less for show than for actual service. The ceremony took place in the cathedral of Notre Dame, which was illuminated for the occasion with fifteen thousand wax-lights. The bride was visibly agitated. She was as pale as death, and her voice in making the responses was scarcely audible. No wonder if in that hour a premonition of evil weighed upon her soul. The civil register of the imperial family—which, preserved by the devotion of some of the adherents of the Bonapartes, had been brought forth to be used at the civil ceremony which had taken place the day before—might well have thrilled her with forebodings. The last record inscribed on those pages had been the birth of the king of Rome. How had it fared with that scion of a mighty father? how might it fare with her own possible offspring?

It speedily became evident that the marriage, unpopular as it had been among the counsellors of the emperor, was still more so among the people at large. No cries of "Long live the empress!" save from the throats of paid agents of the government, rose to greet the beautiful Eugénie when she appeared in public. People stared sullenly at her as at a passing pageant, but were moved neither by her charms nor her gentle and gracious courtesy to any outburst of enthusiasm. To the masses she was "L'Espagnole," the heiress to the bitter hate inspired by the Austrian, Marie Antoinette. Epigrams on the marriage, seasoned with the cruel and ferocious wit for which the Parisians are so famous, circulated on all sides. Some bold hand affixed to the walls of the Tuileries a series of doggerel verses wherein the empress was first called by the nickname of "Badinguette," which was universally applied to her after the fall of the Empire. The author of these lines was discovered and banished to Cayenne, but his verses, set to a popular tune, were long sung in secret in the taverns and workshops of the suburbs.

To a certain extent, popular opinion respecting the young and lovely Eugénie was correct. She was indeed emphatically not the wife that Louis Napoleon should have chosen. A woman of intelligence and force of character might have done much to aid in founding his throne on a more stable basis. The downfall of the Empire, though probably inevitable, might have been delayed for at least a generation. But his choice had fallen upon a lady who had but one qualification for the position in which he had placed her—namely, extreme personal beauty. She was indeed kind-hearted and amiable, and among the temptations of a court as dissolute as was that of Louis XV. she preserved her reputation unspotted. But she was narrow-minded and unintellectual, a bigoted Catholic, and so blinded by national and religious prejudices that many of the most fatal mistakes of the Empire are directly traceable to her influence. An alliance with a royal princess would have strengthened the throne of Louis Napoleon: an alliance with a French lady would have drawn toward him the hearts of the nation. But Eugénie was neither a princess nor a Frenchwoman, nor yet a woman of vigorous and commanding intellect; and his union with her was undoubtedly a serious political error.

But for some time all went well. She ruled gracefully over her allotted realm, which was that of Fashion. The influence of a crowned Parisian beauty over the social doings of the world can hardly be over-estimated. Eugénie invented toilettes that were copied by all the women in the civilized world: she invented crinoline, and added a new product to the manufactures of the earth. No woman better understood the art of dress than she. Certain of her toilettes have retained their celebrity to this day. Never did the art of costly dress reach so high a pinnacle. She fringed her ball-dresses with diamonds, and covered them with lace worth two thousand dollars a yard. Then, like many wise and economical ladies, she undertook to have her dresses made at home, and installed a dressmaker's establishment in the Tuileries, where these splendid garments were prepared under her immediate supervision. The workroom was directly over her private apartments. By means of a trapdoor, whose mechanism was skilfully dissimulated among the ornaments of the cornice and ceiling, a mannikin, arrayed in the garb that was in progress, could be lowered for the empress's inspection. This singular branch of the royal household was under the charge of a functionary whose business it was to purchase silks, velvets and laces at wholesale prices and to superintend the workwomen. The knowledge of its existence was soon spread abroad, and did the empress infinite harm. The petty economy of the proceeding horrified and disgusted the Parisians, who, economical themselves, have ever scorned that virtue in their sovereigns. Many of the partisans of the court denied the existence of such an establishment, but during the period that elapsed between the downfall of the Empire and the outbreak of the Commune the curious throngs that visited the Tuileries might trace amid the mouldings of the ceiling in the empress's boudoir the outline of the famous trapdoor.

It would have been well had she never turned her attention to any less feminine or more dangerous pursuits. But in an evil hour for France and for the nation she undertook to dabble in politics. Left regent during the Austro-Italian campaign, she acquired a taste for reigning, which was increased by the flatteries of her husband's ministers and the counsels of her confessor. It was currently said at court that the Mexican expedition "came ready-made from her boudoir." She hated the United States, as a true daughter of Spain could not fail to detest the coveters of Cuba and the friends of progress and of enlightenment. Consequently, she did not fail to further a project whose real aim was to deal the great republic, then struggling in the throes of civil war, a decisive stab in the back. She approved of the war with China, and condescended to enrich her private apartments with the spoils of the Summer Palace. But her pet project, the one that she had most at heart, was the war with Prussia. The now historical phrase, "This is my war," was uttered by her to General Turr soon after the outbreak of hostilities. And when, an exile and discrowned, she first sought the presence of Queen Victoria, she sobbed out with tears of vain remorse, "It was all my fault. Louis did not want to go to war: 'twas I that forced him to it." Poor lady! bitterly indeed has she atoned for that unwise exercise of undue influence. The holy crusade of which she dreamed against the enemies of her Church and of her husband's throne ended in giving her son's inheritance to the winds.

Nor was her domestic life a happy one. She loved her husband; and indeed Napoleon III. seems to have possessed a rare power of attracting and securing the affections of those about him. Few that came within the influence of his kindly courtesy, his grave and gentle voice, but fell captive to the spell thus subtly exercised. He made many and warm personal friends, even among those who were hostile to his politics and his dynasty. And by three women at least he was loved with a fervor and a constancy that no trial could shake. One of these was the Princess Mathilde, his cousin and once his intended wife; another was Mrs. Howard; the third was his wife. But, like many men who are much loved, Louis Napoleon was incapable of anything like genuine and constant love for any woman. His passion for his lovely empress was as brief as it had been violent. He vexed her soul and tortured her heart by countless conjugal infidelities. She resented this state of affairs with all the vehemence of an outraged wife and a jealous Spaniard. It is said that she once soundly boxed the ears of the distinguished functionary who filled in her husband's household the post that the infamous Lebel held during the latter days of the life of Louis XV. Twice she fled abruptly from the court, unable to bear the presence of insolent and triumphant rivals, and the ingenuity of the fashionable chroniclers of the day was taxed to invent plausible pretexts for her sudden journeys to the Scottish or the Italian lakes. No wonder that the soft eyes grew sadder and the smiles more forced as the years passed on and brought only weariness, disenchantment and the shadow of the coming end.

Alphonse Daudet has said in Le Nabab that there exists in the life of every human being a golden moment, a luminous peak, where all of glory or success that destiny reserves is granted; after which comes the decadence and the descent. This golden moment in the life of the empress Eugénie was the occasion of the first French international exhibition in 1855. She was then in the full pride of her womanhood and her loveliness. The greatest lady in Europe, Queen Victoria, had been her guest, had embraced her as an equal and had given her proofs of real and sincere friendship. Enveloped in clouds of priceless lace and blazing with diamonds of more than regal splendor, she had presided, la belle des belles, over the opening of the exhibition in the Champs Elysées. And, above all, the event so anxiously desired by her husband and by the supporters of his cause was near at hand. She was soon to become the mother of the heir to the imperial throne. With every aspiration gratified, every wish accomplished, she did indeed seem in that year of grace the most enviable of human beings. The later splendors of the exhibition of 1867 were more apparent than real, and the gorgeous assemblage of reigning sovereigns brought with it for Eugénie a subtle and premeditated insult. The kings and emperors who responded to the imperial invitation and came to visit the court of Napoleon III., with one exception, that of the king of the Belgians, left their wives at home. They acted as men do in private life when they receive invitations to a ball given by a family of doubtful standing with whom they are unwilling to quarrel.

I have spoken of the birth of the prince imperial. It may perhaps interest the reader to know how much this auspicious event cost the French nation. Not less than nine hundred thousand francs (one hundred and eighty thousand dollars), of which twenty thousand dollars were paid for the young gentleman's first wardrobe. The whole amount expended at the birth of the Comte de Paris did not exceed this latter sum.

The details of the scenes at the Tuileries after the downfall of the Empire, and those of the flight of the empress, are well known. It is now generally conceded that after Sédan the fate of the imperial dynasty was in the hands of Eugénie. Had she withdrawn to Tours or to Bourges, summoned the Assembly to meet there, and called around her the partisans of the Empire, she might have saved the heritage of her son. But her essentially feminine and frivolous nature was not fitted for deeds of high resolve or for heroic determinations. A morbid dread of following in the footsteps of Marie Antoinette had pursued her in the later years of her prosperity. She knew that she was unpopular, and visions of the fate of the Austrian queen or of the still more horrible one of the Princesse de Lamballe must have risen before her as the shouts of the Parisian mob, exulting in the downfall of her husband, met her ear. In that hour of disaster and of woe no Frenchman, for all the boasted chivalry of the race, was at hand to aid or protect the fair lady who had so long queened it at the Tuileries. The Austrian ambassador, the Italian minister, the Corsican Pietrio planned and managed her escape from the palace. She took refuge in the house of an American, her dentist, Dr. Thomas W. Evans. He it was who got her out of Paris and accompanied her to the seacoast, placing his own carriage at her disposal. She crossed the Channel in the yacht of an English gentleman. Thus guarded by aliens, she passed from the land of her queenship to that of exile.

To-day, in her abode at Chiselhurst, the widow of Napoleon III. attracts scarcely less of the world's interest and attention than she did as throned empress and queen of Fashion. Unfortunately, the supreme tact that once was her distinguishing quality seems to have deserted her in the days of her decadence. She, the most graceful of women, has not learned the art of growing old gracefully. She had played the part of a beauty and the leader of fashion for years. Now that she is past fifty that character is no longer possible to her. But she might have assumed another—less showy, perhaps, but surely far more touching. With her whitening hairs she might have worthily worn the triple dignity of her widowhood, her maternity and her misfortune. She has chosen instead, with a weakness unworthy of the part that she has played on the wide stage of contemporary history, to clutch vainly after the fleeting shadow of her vanished charms. A head loaded with false yellow hair, a face covered with paint and powder, a mincing gait and the airs and graces of an antiquated coquette,—such to-day is she who was once the world's wonder for her loveliness and grace, a bewigged Mrs. Skewton succeeding to the dazzling vision that swerved the calculating policy of Napoleon III. and won his callous heart, and that still smiles upon us from the canvas of Winterhalter.

LUCY H. HOOPER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP

A LOST COLONY

Why does nobody—antiquarian, historian, or even novelist—open again that forgotten page of history, the story of the lost colony of Norwegians who disappeared in the fourteenth century from the shores of Greenland? Doctor Hayes, after he came back, had a good deal to say of them, but he did not gather all the facts, and his book, I believe, is now out of print.

I know no mystery made of such nightmare stuff as this in history; and mysteries are growing scarce now-a-days as eggs of the terrible Dinornis: we cannot afford to lose one of them.

The foremost figure in the story is of course Leif hin-hepna ("the happy"). There is much to be unearthed concerning that famous pioneer in discovery and religion, and we Americans surely ought to have enough interest in him to do it, as Leif unearthed this continent for us out of the hold of the sea and Demigorgon ages ago, while the dust of which Columbus was to be made centuries later was yet blowing loose about the streets of Genoa. Leif, besides discovering new worlds, turned the souls of all his father's subjects from paganism to such Christianity as the times afforded. I protest, this vigorous young Greenlander heads the roll of unrecognized heroes in the world: heathen and Christians have made demigods and saints out of much flimsier stuff than he.

The colony, too, out of which he came, what a spectral shadow it is beside the live flesh-and-blood figures of other nations! At the banquet of the boar-eating Scottish thanes there was one empty chair, and that was filled by a ghost. We hear of the East and West Bygds, settlements with hundreds of farms, churches, cathedrals, monasteries, set on the narrow rim of green coast which edges Greenland, lying between the impenetrable wall of ice inland and the Arctic Sea without. They had their religion, which Leif brought to them; they were busy and prosperous; they married, traded, fought, loved and died; and with a breath they all vanished from off the face of the earth. There is no ghost-story like this in literature.

Where will you find, too, such a delightful flavor of ancient mystery as in the old chronicles which tell of these people? Besides the Sagas there are the voyages of long-ago-forgotten navigators—Arthur himself, the Venetian brothers Nicolo and Antonio Zeni, King Zichmni, divers Frisian fishermen. These old records, coffee-colored with age and frail as skeleton leaves, are yet to be found in certain libraries, and surely would tempt any one with a soul above newspapers. In them you shall hear how these voyagers, in their poor barkentines of from ten to two hundred tons, entered into this region of enormous tides, of floating hordes of mountainous icebergs, of flaming signs in the sky—into all the horrors, in fact, of an Arctic winter and night, darkened still deeper for them by nameless superstitious terrors. They went down to these deeps in very much the temper with which a living man now-a-days would adventure into hell. The icy peaks of the far-off land they knew were glittering silver, and the sea was full of malignant spirits which guarded it. A mountain-magnet lay hid under the sea, dragging the ships down to it (as late, indeed, as 1830 skilled Danish navigators declared that they felt the stress from it, and fled in terror): the unnatural tides were the breathing of angry Demigorgon. There were, however, other sights and sounds not to be explained in even this reasonable fashion. On a fair day and a calm sea panic would seize the soul of every man on board, and the ship would turn and beat homeward, "as one who knows a frightful fiend doth follow him behind."

It is the mystery of the lost colony, however, which ought to be opened by some competent hand. In 1406, Queen Margaret, it will be remembered, laid an interdict upon trade with them: for two centuries afterward not even a passing barkentine touched upon the Greenland shore. At the end of that time, when explorers were sent from the civilized world in search of the long-forgotten colonists, they had utterly vanished. There, to this day, are their dwellings and churches, solidly built of stone in an architectural style which Graah fifty years ago described as simple and elegant: there are even the ruins of the monastery which the Zeni brothers declare was heated by a magical hot sulphurous spring, the waters of which were conveyed through the building by pipes. But the people had absolutely disappeared. Not even a bit of pottery, a grave or a bone was left; which last is a noteworthy circumstance, as portions of the human body are almost indestructible in that climate. Seventeen expeditions have been sent out by the Danish and Norwegian governments in search of this lost colony, the last of which was within the present half century. One of these was headed by Egedi, a poor Norwegian clergyman to whom is owing the civilization of Greenland, and of whose strange heroic life we know too little.

There are two or three conjectures to account for the disappearance of this colony. One is that they were all murdered by the Skröellings. But where are their bones? Besides, the colonists numbered from fifteen to twenty thousand, and were much superior to the natives in size, strength, intelligence and knowledge of war.

Graah, a Danish navigator who came in search of them in 1828, believes that they were carried off bodily by the English after the ravages of the "black death" in England, to repair the waste of human life, citing a treaty of 1433 in which England was charged with abducting Danish subjects for that end. Another theory is that the Frisian king Zichmni carried them off captive. Pope Nicholas asserts this outrage as a fact in a bull in 1448. But Zichmni is as uncertain a personage in history as Demigorgon; and the good popes were not so infallible as to matters of general news before the establishment of telegraph and postal service as they are now.

Mr. Dalton Dorr, who accompanied Hayes, tells me that among the Esquimaux there is a tradition that a colony of foreigners once owned the land, and about five centuries ago emigrated in a body northward, crossing the Mer de Glace—that they found an open sea, and somewhere within the eternal rampart of snow and ice now dwell securely by its shores. As early as 1500 the migratory Skröellings told of this colony far to the north-east. These rumors possessed substance enough to warrant the expeditions from Denmark, which have all been directed to the eastern coast. Graah heard from his guides of a strange people with high features, hoarse voices and large stature living beyond the limits passed by Europeans.

Here is a mystery surely worth finding out—a people exiled from their kind for centuries living at the Pole—something better worth search than even Franklin's bones. To give it reality, too, we must remember how many Arctic explorers have caught sight, as they thought, of an open sea near the Pole—a sea with strong, iceless swells, and on whose shores warm rains fell. Nobody need suggest that these people would probably, after our search, not be worth looking for. What shall we do with the North-west Passage when we have found it?

R. H. D.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF BEING AGREEABLE

"A man will please more by never offending than by giving a great deal of delight." In this remark of Doctor Johnson's lies the art of being agreeable. But nothing is more difficult than to avoid offending. Most people are offended by trifles. For instance, persons generally take umbrage at superior brilliance of conversation. "The man who talks for fame will never please." Even he who talks to unburden his mind will please only some old and solitary friend. Large experience and great learning, however quietly carried, are very offensive to those who have them not. Clever things cannot be said unobtrusively enough. A person so brilliant as to make others feel that his efforts are above theirs will be detested. Moreover, one of the difficulties of being agreeable is that the apprehension of offending and the small hope of pleasing destroy all captivation of manner. The confident expectation of pleasing is an infallible means of pleasing. Characters pleased with themselves please others, for they are joyous and natural in mien, and are at liberty from thinking of themselves to pay successful attention to others. Still, the self-conceited and the bragging are never attractive, self being the topic on which all are fluent and none interesting. They who dwell on self in any way—the self-deniers, the self-improvers—are hateful to the heart of civilized man. The Chinese, who knew everything beforehand, are perfect in self-abnegation of manner. "How are your noble and princely son and your beautiful and angelic daughter?" says Mandarin Number One.—"Dog of a son have I none, but my cat of a daughter is well," says Mandarin Number Two.

To set up for an invariably agreeable person you must adjust yourself to the peculiarities of others. You must talk of books to bookworms: you must be musical with musicians, scientific with savants. Furthermore, you have to make believe all the time that you are enjoying yourself. The belle is a lady who has an air of enjoying herself with whomsoever she talks. We like those who seem to delight in our company. You must not overdo it, and thus make yourself suspected of acting; but do not imagine that you will please without trying. Those who are careless of pleasing are never popular. Those who do not care how they look invariably look ugly. You will never please without doing all these things and more.

What a Pecksniffian business it is to go into! Who wants to refrain from smart, spiteful sayings when he happens to think of them, to abjure laughing at friends and ridiculing enemies, to renounce the tart rebuff, the keen riposte? Amazing that any succeed! and many do. There are some gentlemen who are entirely agreeable—"gentlemen all through," like Robert Moore in Shirley. They have order, neatness, delicacy of movement, reticence, incuriosity: their unaffected English has almost the charm of a musical composition. They are generally men whose mothers well nagged them when they were small with perpetual adjurations: "Do not bang the door," "Stop kicking your feet," "Stop clinking your plate with your fork," and so on.

In some inscrutable way, young girls often attain thorough agreeableness. Look at lazy little Jane: she has acquired the highest charm of repose. Look at Sally, who used to be such an angular and hurried little girl: she is all quips and cranks and wreathèd smiles now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident, blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the highly-embellished performances of other girls.