One of the ladies most intimate with the empress was the wife of Prince Richard Metternich, the Austrian ambassador.  This lady seems to have had personal and political ends in view, and to have succeeded in inducing the empress to adopt and further them.  That she was a dangerous and false friend may be judged from a speech she made when remonstrated with for countenancing and encouraging a project, favored by the empress, of making a promenade in the forest of Fontainebleau with her court-ladies in skirts which, like those in the old Scotch ballad, should be “kilted up to the knee.”  “You would not have advised your own empress,” it was said to her, “to appear in such a garb.”  “Of course not,” replied the ambassadress; “but my empress is of royal birth.—­a real empress; while yours, ma chere, was Mademoiselle de Montijo!”

Brought up in private life, not early trained to the self-abnegation demanded of princesses, the Empress Eugenie did not bring into her new sphere all the aplomb and seriousness about little things which are early inculcated on ladies brought up to the profession of royalty.  The career for which she had formed herself was that of a very charming woman; and one secret of her fascination was the sincerity of the interest she took in those around her.  She loved to study character, to see into men’s souls.  She loved to be adored, while irresponsively she received men’s homage.  She especially liked the society of famous men, and when she was to meet them, she took pains to inform herself on the subjects about which they were most likely to converse.

That Queen Victoria loves her as a sister and a friend, is a testimony to her dignity and goodness; and we have her husband’s own opinion of her, published on her fete-day, Dec. 15, 1868, after nearly sixteen years of marriage.  The emperor had under his control a monthly magazine called “Le Dix Decembre,” in which he often inserted articles from his own pen.  The manuscript of this, in his own handwriting, was found in 1870 in the sack of the Tuileries.  He omits all mention of his wife’s Scotch ancestry, neither does he allude to her school-days in England.  He speaks of her as a member of one of the most distinguished families in Spain, extols her father’s attachment to the house of Bonaparte, and tells how she and her sister were placed at the Sacre Coeur, near Paris, declaring that “she acquired, we may say, the French before the Spanish language.”  He goes on to speak of her, not as the leader of a giddy circle of fashion in Madrid, as Washington Irving describes her, but as the thoughtful, studious young girl, with a precocious taste for social problems and for the society of men of letters; and he adds that after her marriage her simple, natural tastes did not disappear.  “After her visit to the cholera patients at Amiens,” he says, “nothing seemed to surprise her more than the applause that everywhere celebrated her courage.  She seemed at last distressed by it....  At Compiegne,” he also tells us, “nothing can be more attractive than five o’clock tea a l’imperatrice; though,” he adds slyly, “sometimes she is a little too fond of argument.”