[Footnote 1:  Saturday Review, 1885.]

The beautiful woman thus raised to the imperial throne[2] was a mixed character,—­not so perfect as some have represented her, but entirely to be acquitted of those grave faults that envy or disappointed expectations have attributed to her.  Her character united kind-heartedness with inconsideration, imprudence with austerity, ardent feeling with great practical common-sense.  Probably the emperor understood her very little at the time of his marriage, and that she long remained to him an enigma may have been one of her charms.  With the impetuosity of her disposition and the intrepidity that had characterized her girlhood, she found it hard to submit to the restraints of her position, and the emperor had occasion frequently to remonstrate with her on her indifference to etiquette and public opinion.  It was not until after her visit to Windsor in 1855 that she could be induced to establish court rules at the Tuileries, and to prescribe for herself and others, in public, a strict system of etiquette.  But in her private hours, among her early friends, in the circle of ladies admitted to her intimacy, the empress was less discreet.  Her impressions were apt to run into extremes; she indulged in whims like other pretty women; yet she was never carried by her romantic feelings or her enthusiasm beyond her power of self-control.  Though careless of etiquette in private life, whenever a great occasion came, she could act with imperial dignity.

[Footnote 2:  Pierre de Lano.]

Although she often experienced ingratitude, she was always generous.  She was as ready to solicit favors and pardons as was the Empress Josephine.  Sometimes she was even sorely embarrassed to find arguments in favor of her proteges. “Ah, mon Dieu!” she cried once, when pleading for the pardon of a workman, “how could he be guilty?  He has a wife and five children to support; he could have had no time for conspiracy!”

As a wife she was devoted, not only to the public interests of her husband, but to his personal welfare.  She was constantly anxious lest he should suffer from overwork; and her little select evening parties, which some people found fault with, were instituted by her with the chief object of amusing him.

Ben Jonson makes it a reproach against a lady of the sixteenth century that she would not “suffer herself to be admired.”  No such reproach could be addressed to the Empress Eugenie.  Few women conscious of their power to charm will fail to exercise it.  In the case of an empress,—­young, lively, of an independent and adventurous spirit, and very beautiful,—­all who approached her thought better of themselves from her apparent appreciation of their claims to consideration; and, indeed, in her position was it not the duty of the successor of Josephine to be gracious and charming to everybody?

Unfortunately the ladies who most enjoyed the intimacy of the Empress Eugenie were foreigners.  She seems to have felt a certain distrust of Frenchwomen; and considering the ingratitude she often met with from those she served, it is hardly surprising that she preferred the intimacy of women who could not look to her for favors.