The grandest thing of all was a State ball in Versailles;—that
magnificent but mournful, almost monumental pile, being
gaily decorated and illuminated—almost
transformed out of its tragic traditions. What
a charming picture of her hostess the Queen gives
us:
“The Empress met us at the top of the staircase,
looking like a fairy queen, or nymph, in a white dress,
trimmed with grass and diamonds,—a beautiful
tour de corsage of diamonds round the top of
her dress;—the same round her waist, and
a corresponding coiffure, with her Spanish
and Portuguese orders.”
She must have been a lovely vision. The Emperor
thought so, for (according to the Queen) forgetting
that it is not “good form” for a man to
admire or compliment his own wife, he exclaimed, as
she appeared: “Comme tu es belle! ”
("How beautiful you are!”)
I am afraid he was not always so polite. During
her first season at the Tuileries, which she called
“a beautiful prison,” and which is now
as much a thing of the past as the Bastile, she often
in her gay, impulsive way offended against the stern
laws of Court etiquette, and was reproved for a lack
of dignity. Once at a reception she suddenly perceived
a little way down the line an old school-friend, and,
hurrying forward, kissed her affectionately.
It was nice for the young lady, but the Emperor frowned
and said, in that cold marital tone which cuts like
an east wind: “Madame, you forget that
you are the Empress!”
In a letter from the Prince to his uncle Leopold I
find this suggestive sentence in reference to the
ball at Versailles: “Victoria made her
toilette in Marie Antoinette’s boudoir.”
It would almost seem the English Queen might have
feared to see in her dressing-glass a vision of the
French Queen’s proud young head wearing a diadem
as brilliant as her own, or perhaps that cruel crown
of silver—her terror-whitened hair.
The parting was sad. The Empress “could
not bring herself to face it”; so the Queen
went to her room with the Emperor, who said: “Eugenie,
here is the Queen.” “Then,”
adds Her Majesty, “she came and gave me a beautiful
fan and a rose and heliotrope from the garden, and
Vicky a bracelet set with rubies and diamonds containing
her hair, with which Vicky was delighted.”
The Emperor went with them all the way to Boulogne
and saw them on board their yacht; then came embracings
and adieux, and all was over.
The next morning early they reached Osborne and were
received at the beach by Prince Alfred and his little
brothers, to whom Albert Edward, big with the wonders
of Paris, was like a hero out of a fairy book.
Near the house waited the sisters, Helena and Louise,
and in the house the invalid—“poor,
dear Alice!”—for whom the joy of that
return was almost too much.
Betrothal of the Princess Royal—Birth of
the Prince Imperial of France— More visitors
and visitings—The Emperor And Empress of
Mexico—Marriage of the Princess Royal—The
attendant festivities.
