The Comedy & Tragedy of the Second Empire Paris Society in the Sixties; Including Letters of Napoleon III., M. Pietri, and Comte de la Chapelle, and Portraits of the Period

_It is August, 1840, and from the balcony of the Delesserts’ house a fair-complexioned, golden-haired girl of fourteen looks down on a man escorted by two gendarmes. Dishevelled...

Few English readers are, I imagine, familiar with the boyhood and the adolescence of Napoleon III., whose centenary fell on April 20, 1908. It is true that Blanchard Jerrold has...

Between 1839 and 1848 Prince Louis Napoleon (allowing for the six years which he spent at Ham) resided mostly, if not entirely, in London. In the first part of those years--on h...

Since I wrote to you, the death of Mlle. de P.’s father has somewhat changed my marriage plans, for until now I did not know any of the ladies whose names had been placed before...

The Empress, to say it for the thousandth time, was incomparably beautiful, “divine,” and, like most pretty women--although a Sovereign, and perhaps because she was a Sovereign-...

The Empress has to her credit the creation of Biarritz, which developed from a little Basque village into the French Brighton, and became a seat of the imperial Court. The Villa...

To the château of Bouchout, hard by Laecken, the thoughts of the châtelaine of Farnborough Hill must often have wandered. The beautiful avenue of Meysse, which links the royal e...

The “great” balls at the Tuileries were given before Lent; the “little” balls, otherwise known as the Empress’s “Mondays,” after Easter. At the larger of these entertainments al...

Napoleon III. had a great liking for Fontainebleau, the scene of his Uncle’s abdication. It may well have been that he desired to banish from the place all that reminded him of...

The social history of the Second Empire was resumed in the Tuileries, St. Cloud, Fontainebleau, Biarritz, and Compiègne. The name of the latter lingered fondly on the lips of th...

A legion of foreigners awaited the establishment of the Second Empire to swoop down upon Paris and make it their happy hunting-ground. These invaders came from all countries; th...

I hope thou art not over-fatigued, and that the emotions of the day will not make thee unwell. I am always thinking of thee. I am happy and proud to see thee sharing the fatigue...

In the dead of the night the springless waggon containing two doctors of a Sanitäts-Corps and myself rumbled through the streets of hilly Clermont, at that moment[96] the headqu...

Often as the story of the Empress’s escape from the Tuileries on September 4, 1870, has been told--perhaps with more circumstantiality by the late Mr. T. W. Evans than by anyone...

Between December 23, 1870, and January 25, 1871, a minute record was made, by order of the new Government, of all the objects found in the imperial apartments at the Tuileries,...

Although the name of the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau is a very familiar one, it seems desirable to put on record some details of her family history, if only in order to explain...

Besides the epistles addressed by Napoleon III. to the late Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau, many interesting letters from the imperial pen are scattered about in the vivid pages of...

The date is December 20, 1848, and. M. Marrast, President of the National Assembly, invites Citizen Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to take the oath required by the Constitutio...

The whole House was on its feet, threatening, shaking its fists at a man with a waxen face who protested against this last humiliation inflicted on his master. Like the Jews dem...

I have told, in “The Empress Eugénie: 1870-1910,”[139] how, on January 9, 1873, upon hearing of the unexpected death of Napoleon III., I hastened from the Temple to Chislehurst...

Mr. ----, instead of going to Cowes on Friday, as had been arranged, was obliged to spend the day in the City, and he sent word to me in the evening to inquire whether he might...

This clear-headed artillery officer, ever on the alert, saw what would inevitably happen sooner or later, and he bombarded his Government with warning reports, which were either...

[⁂ THESE POLITICAL VIEWS OF H.I.H. PRINCE NAPOLEON NOW APPEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CONCRETE FORM. QUESTIONED IN LONDON, IN JUNE, 1911, AS TO HIS “PROGRAMME,” THE PRINCE REPLIED...