* An officer wrote me during the Franco-Prussian war
that at Rezonville, in 1870, when brilliantly charging
at the head of his men, Michel Ney, then a colonel
of dragoons, received three sabre-cuts over his head
and face, and after killing five Prussians rolled
under his wounded horse. He eventually recovered.
Count Clary, a cousin of Napoleon iii, when I
met him, had only recently emerged from his worsted
chrysalis;** and Albert Bazaine, the marshal’s
own nephew, was impatiently waiting to be raised from
the depressing position of a piou-piou, that he might
enjoy the full social benefits of his relationship
to the commander-in-chief.
* He was promoted to the rank of captain before the
return of the French army, and commanded a contre-guerilla
known as the “Free Company of Mexican partizans”
(see D’Hericault, loc. cit., p. 79), which did
brave work in the state of Michoacan against the bands
of General Regules and others, and later in the neighborhood
of Mexico, without ever exciting the bitter hatred
which the contreguerilla of Colonel Dupin, holding
the state of Vera Cruz, drew upon itself. (See “Queretaro,”
by Haus, p. 56.)
The position of these gentlemen in a capital where
the army was, so to speak, under arms, and where no
civilian’s dress, therefore, was allowed to
a soldier, was ambiguous and gave rise to amusing anomalies.
For instance, they, of course, could not be admitted
to official balls or entertainments where uniforms
were de rigueur, as only officers were invited.
They paid calls, however, and thus mixed on neutral
ground with their officers; and so these nondescript
military larvae managed to enjoy life until the day
came when they might become official butterflies.
As for the Marquis de Massa, the day had long gone
by when, driving in his own trap to the gate of the
Paris barracks after a night spent out on leave through
the leniency of General Floury, he set to work to curry
his own horse. His keen wit and happy repartee,
his good-humored sarcasm, and, above all, the magnetism
of a personality that scorned deceit and gave itself
for no better or worse than it was, combined to make
him a favorite among the devotees of pleasure whom
Napoleon iii and Empress Eugenie had gathered
about them; and notwithstanding his empty pockets,
his roofless chateau in Auvergne, and his sparsely
braided sleeve, he was an habitue of the Austrian
embassy and of the best salons in Paris, and made
for himself a conspicuous place in the innermost circle
of the court of Compiegne and the Tuileries. He
had written a number of light plays for the amateur
stage of Parisian society, and his dramatic efforts
had been interpreted by players whose high-sounding
names might be found on pages of history.
His first attempt was the “Cascades de Mouchy,”
on December 9, 1863. The representation was given
at the Chateau de Mouchy, to which “all Paris”
traveled for the purpose. In the words of the
“Figaro”: “It was a complete
mobilization of Parisian society.” The Duc
de Mouchy, a man of the old nobility, had recently
married Princess Anna Murat; and the actors as well
as the audience represented the wit, talent, wealth,
and power of the Second Empire.
