[Illustration:  EUGENIE.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE EMPEROR’S MARRIAGE.

A plebiscite—­Louis Napoleon’s political panacea—­was ordered Dec. 20, 1851, two weeks after the coup d’etat, to say if the people of France approved or disapproved the usurpation of the prince president.  The national approval as expressed in this plebiscite was overwhelming.  Each peasant and artisan seemed to fancy he was voting to revive the past glories of France, when expressing his approval of a Prince Napoleon.  The more thoughtful voters, like M. de Montalembert, considered that the coup d’etat was a crushing blow struck at Red Republicanism, Communism, the International Society, and disorder generally.

For a while the prince president governed by decrees; then a new legislative body was assembled.  Its first duty was to revise the constitution.  The republican constitution of 1850 was in the main re-adopted, but with one important alteration.  The prince president was to be turned into the Emperor Napoleon III., and the throne was to be hereditary in his family.

After the passage of this measure it was submitted by another plebiscite to the people.  The plebiscite is a universal suffrage vote of yes or no, in answer to some question put by the Government to the nation.  The question this time was:  Shall the prince president become emperor?  There were 7,800,000 ayes, and 224,000 noes.

When the news of this overwhelming success reached the Elysee, Louis Napoleon sat so still and unmoved, smoking his cigar, that his cousin, Madame Baiocchi, rushing up to him, shook him, and exclaimed:  “Is it possible that you are made of stone?”

Having thus secured his elevation by the almost universal consent of Frenchmen, the new emperor’s next step was to insure his dynasty by a marriage that might probably give heirs to the throne.  He chose the title Napoleon III. because the son of the Great Napoleon had been Napoleon II. for a few days after his father’s abdication at Fontainebleau in 1814.  The next heir to the imperial dignities (Lucien Bonaparte having refused anything of the kind for himself or for his family) was Jerome Napoleon, familiarly called Plon-Plon.  He was the only son of Jerome Bonaparte and the Princess Catherine of Wuertemberg.  But Prince Napoleon, though clever, was wilful and eccentric, and made a boast of being a Red Republican; moreover, his father’s Baltimore marriage had made his legitimacy more than doubtful,—­at any rate, Louis Napoleon was by no means desirous of passing on to him the succession to the empire; and being now forty-four years old, he was desirous of marrying as soon as possible.

When a boy, it had been proposed to marry him to his cousin Mathilde, and something like an attachment had sprung up between them; but after his fiasco at Strasburg he was no longer considered an eligible suitor either for Princess Mathilde or another cousin who had been named for him, a princess of Baden.  Princess Mathilde was married to the Russian banker, Prince Demidorff; but when Louis Napoleon became prince president, he requested her to preside at the Elysee.