The semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1882-1886, 1883-05-16
EMPRESS EUGENE.
Last Days Of the Napoleonic
Dynasty.

The events of the 14th served on
the whole to give the court too great
a sense of security. On the 18th the
battles round Metz began, and Baz-
aine's armies, everywhere outnum-
bered and beaten, had to retreat be-
fore the German hosts. But st. Pri-
vate and Gravelotte were reported to
the Parisians as victories, and it was
said that Bazaine had thrown HIM
self into Metz in order to take up a
"strong position ~ The Empress
believed in all these fables. Was it
a wonder that she should do so when
at clubs like the Union and the Ger
Gle Imperial, old Generals would
bark furiously at YOU if you expressed
any doubt as to Marshal CanrObert's
having driven whole regiment of
Prussian cuirassiers- into the sandpits
of Jaumont-sandpits which had no
existence. The truth is, double sets
of kilograms used to be sent from the
seat of war, and those which related
events with some approach to the
truth (for none of them were wholly
truthfuD were never communicated
to the Empess. When the hoaxing
dispatch about the Jaumont sand
pits was put iuto her hands,
the poor lady, believing in real
victory, was so overjoyed that she
ran down from her apartments to the
guard room right among the soldiers,
who were lying upon camp-beds or
playing cards, and waved the tele-
gram, crying, "The Prussians are
beaten!" She then suspended all her
own personal preparations for flight.
She said that if revolution were at
tempted in Paris she would herself
ride at the head of the troops that
quelled it. This was her mood dur
ing se> eral days, and it explains how
so few of her own chatteis were re-
moved from the palace. Her ward
robe contained more than three hun
dred dresses; her collection of fans,
of furs, of lace and linen was prob
ably unique, for the pin money which
she had received in monthly pay
ments ever since her marriage
amounted to G4S, 600 a year, and one
may add that she never failed to
spend this sum to the last frame.
Everything that the Empress pos
sessed, with the exception of her
Jewels and few valuable missals,
was left at the Tuilleries when she
fled; and the jewels would have been
abandoned too had not Madame Ca
rette, one of her Majesty's ladies in
waiting, prevailed upon her, after
much pleading, to have these treas
ures conflded to a banker.
The Empress led a curious life dur
ing her last days on the throne. She
was up every morning at seven
O'Clock, attired in a black cashmere
dress which she wore all day with
plain white collar and cuffs. At
half-past seven she heard mass said
in the private chapel of the Tuiller-
les by Monseigneur Bauer, her almo-
ner. Immediately after this she took
a cup of chocolate with Madame
Carette, who, by the by, was one of
the most renowned court beauties
and a most charming companion,
owing to her exquisite cheerfulness.
The Empress private apartments
were on the first floor of the Pavilion
de Flore overlooking the garden and
glorious view of the
Siene and the Champs Ulysses as far
as the Triunphal Arch. The room
in which she generally sat was Il cir
cular saloon, very gaily decorated
with pannels painted by Charles
Chaplin, and illustrating the loves of
a violet and a rose. In this room
from eight o'clock in the morning un-
til long after the nominal hour for
dinner, which day after day was de-
layed, the Empress received an unin-
terrupted flow of visitors, and the
confusion of those wretched times.
was shown by the kind as well as by
the number of persons who were al
lowed to penetrate into her presence.
Crack-pated men bringing plans
for new campaigns, inventors who
had new sorts of shells to propose,
wives of convicts who sought pardon
for their husbands, and, it is pitiful
to add, men of every degree who
to coax or bully grants of
money, posts or decorations out ola
Regent whom they knew to have
more in her of womanly sweetness
than of regal strength-all these pe'-
pie were, by some objectionable mis-
on the part of those
who should have protected the En-
press, allowed to plague her all day
Iong. An excuse that may be offered
for some of the men then in power is
that several of them were quite new
10 the responsibilities Of office. Nj.
Clement Duvernois, for instance-a
young man of twenty-nine, who had
become Minister of Commerce on the
strength of some dashing newspaper
a regular Bohemian
who used always to show all inch of
shirt between his vest and the waist
0and Of his neither garments. From
he would go out
with patent leather boot on one foot
md clump-soled shoe on the other.
This eccentric man of talent, who
displayed some administrative ability
n provisioning Paris for the seige.
lsed to give audience to quondam
Bohemian brethren.