The Tragic Empress
by . Translated by Hamish Miles. New York: Harper & Bros. 1928. 8vo. 264 pp. Illus. $.3.50.
MAURICE BARRÈS has evoked l'Impératrice du Silence; we are now invited to hear the Empress of Tragic Confessions. Erom 1901 to 1909. the Empress Eugénie had several interviews with Air. Maurice Paleologue. who had been presented to her by the Princess Mathilde. The Empress felt a trusting affection for this diplomat, in whom she found courtesy, independence of judgment, and a wealth of information on European history. Having come to the close of her life, she wished to deliver herself of a heavy load of valuable confidences. She bad promised Napoleon III never to write her mémoires; she has kept her promise, but to Mr. Paléologue she has opened the treasures of her extraordinary memory, and we can to-day reap an intensely interesting harvest from his pages.
Mr. Paléologue brings her to us vividly: a woman who has been tried without losing courage, who has known, as a wife and sovereign, as a mother and a patriot., every anguish and every sorrow. ‘She still retains the traces of her former beauty. . . . Her shoulders, held rigid and erect, do not so much as touch the back of the armchair. Her hands, extremely delicate, are of a pale amber color. . . . From Her whole person there springs a curious impression of majesty, of something hieratic, and of ruin.’ Site is cultivated; she reads, as they appear, all important works on history and politics. She quotes Shakespeare or Æschylus, without pedantry and with à propos.
The glories and mirages of the Second Empire, treaties and crowned heads, victories and defeats, men and nations — everything takes life for us. Not that Mr. Paléologue accepts without restrictions certain of the statements of the Empress. More than once the tactful diplomat, confessing that ‘pity made him acquiesce in what she said, adds to his notes historical discussions in which the personal plea of a sorrowful woman is confronted with the inflexibility of facts and of chronology.
Some chapters bring to history revelations which we must henceforth take into consideration. It appears, for instance, that her personal rôle was more decisive than certain historians, such as Mr. de la Gorce, are willing to grant, If she protests with indignation against the terrible words so often attributed to her concerning the war of 1870, 'It is my war!' ('Never, do you hear me, never did that sacrilegious phrase, nor any like it, come from my lips!') she recognizes that she was an important factor in the decision winch launched Maximilian on the mad Mexican venture. ‘What gave Napoleon III the final and decisive impetus?' asked Mr. Paléologue. Abruptly she answered, ‘It came in 1861, at Biarritz, from myself.'
One of the most striking documents revealed in this book is an autograph letter, dated October 26 1870, which King William of Prussia wrote to the Empress Eugénie, to confirm the Draconian demands of Bismarck: ‘Germany is desirous of being assured that the next war will find her better prepared to repulse the aggression on which she can count as soon as France has restored her strength or gained allies. It is solely this regrettable consideration and not my desire of national aggrandizement which forces me to insist on cessions of territory which have no other end than that of pushing further back the starting point of French armies in the future.'
When the reader closes this book, so full of tragic memories and noble sincerity, he cannot help subscribing to the words of Mr. Paléologue. admiring in the Empress Eugenio ‘a pride and nobility of spirit beyond the common' and asserting that ‘not even in the Empire’s most glorious hours, with the diadem on her brow, did the Empress appear more full of majesty.'
ANDRÉ MORIE