Free Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire by Desmond Seward

left the ball at two o’clock in the morning. Mlle de Montijo responds to his attentions with grace and decorum; her mother and she are hoping for a marriage, using the most skilful tactics. Everybody pays court to Mlle de Montijo, asks to be remembered to her, begs her to intervene with the emperor. Ministers succumb to her charm, she is seen at all the receptions, and has quite obviously become the rising star.
    The ‘most skilful tactics’ owed a lot to Prosper Mérimée, whose advice they relied on, however much he disapproved of the marriage. It was rumoured that he drafted Eugenia’s letters to Napoleon – he may well have written her letter of November 1851 in which she declared undying loyalty to the Bonapartist cause. They could not have been so cheerful at Princesse Mathilde’s partyif they had not felt reasonably confident. Yet the emperor was certainly taking a very long time to propose. It was impossible to know what he was really thinking – he was not called ‘The Sphinx of the Tuileries’ for nothing. Even now, he might still change his mind. An exasperated Mérimée advised them to tell everyone they were about to leave for Italy.
    Many people at the highest level were still convinced that the marriage would never happen. At a ball at the Tuileries on 12 January when Maria Manuela and Eugenia sat on a bench reserved for ministers’ wives, Mme Drouyn de Lhuys hissed in Eugenia’s ear that ‘foreign adventuresses have no right to sit there’. (No one heard Mme Drouyn’s exact words.) Both stood up in confusion. But the emperor hurried over, inviting them to join the imperial family on the dais, leaving Mme Drouyn to be reduced to tears by the spiteful smiles of other ministerial wives. When he danced with Eugenia later in the evening, remembering Mérimée’s advice, she told him that she was leaving for Italy. ‘I am not going to stay here and be insulted.’
    ‘One can say that the ball had the effect of announcing the marriage’, recorded Hübner. Yet even two days later we find Hübner bothering to note down a rumour that it would take place, and when he saw Eugenia at a dinner party that evening she was looking pale and tense – still waiting for a formal proposal.
    Only on 15 January did the minister of the imperial household, Achille Fould, call in person at Doña Maria Manuela’s flat in the Place Vendôme to deliver a letter from the emperor:
Madame la Comtesse, a long time has passed since I fell in love with your daughter, and ever since then I have wanted to make her my wife. So today I have come to ask you for her hand, because no one could make me more happy or is more worthy to wear a crown. I beg, however, that should you give your consent, then you will not allow this project to become widely known before we have completed all our arrangements.
    Doña Eugenia’s reaction to this unambiguous proposal from Louis-Napoleon, which she had supposedly been seeking all these months, is doubly revealing. It shows that she had been far from sure he was going to propose, while at the same time it confirms beyond any doubt that she had been in love with the Marqués de Alcañisez. For she at once wrote to Don Pepe, asking him what he thoughtshe ought to do. The Second Empire, it has to be remembered, was after all a police state and when the censors intercepted the letter, after removing the wax seal so that it could be opened, they immediately forwarded the letter to the emperor who, however, ordered them to replace the seal and to let the letter reach its destination. In reply, Alcañisez coolly sent his congratulations – obviously he had never been in love with her.
    Mérimée shrewdly obtained from the Spanish heralds a certificate of Doña Eugenia’s impeccably noble birth on her father’s side. His object was to make her background look as imposing as possible in the official announcement of her marriage. The French people would learn that their ruler was to marry the daughter