The news of the capitulation at Sedan and of the decree deposing the emperor, roused the Parisian populace.  By one o’clock on September 5 the mob began to threaten the Tuileries.  Then the Italian ambassador, Signor Nigra, and the Austrian ambassador, Prince Richard Metternich, insisted that the empress must seek a place of safety.  As it was impossible to reach the street from the Tuileries, they made their way through the long galleries of the Louvre, and gained the entrance opposite the parish church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.[1] The street was blocked with people uttering cries against the emperor.  A gamin recognized the fugitives, and shouted, “Here comes the empress!” De Nigra gave him a kick, and asked him how he dared to cry:  “Vive l’Empereur?” At this the crowd turned upon the boy, and in the confusion the empress and her lady-in-waiting were put into a cab, driven, it is said, by Gamble, the emperor’s faithful English coachman.  If this were so, the empress did not recognize him, for after proceeding a little way, she and Madame le Breton, her companion, finding they had but three francs between them, and dreading an altercation with the cabman if this were not enough to pay their fare, got out, and proceeded on foot to the house of the American dentist, Dr. Thomas Evans.  There they had to wait till admitted to his operating-room.  The doctor’s amazement when he saw them was great; he had not been aware of what was passing at the Tuileries, but he took his hat, and went out to collect information.  Soon he returned to tell the empress that she had not escaped a moment too soon.

[Footnote 1:  Temple Bar, 1883.]

His wife was at Deauville, a fashionable watering-place in Normandy.  The doctor placed her wardrobe at the disposal of the empress, who had saved nothing of her own but a few jewels.  It is said she owned three hundred dresses, and her collection of fans, laces, etc., was probably unique.  Her own servants had begun to pillage her wardrobe before she left the Tuileries.  It is said that she would have gone forth on horseback and have put herself at the head of the troops, but that no riding-habit had been left her, except a gay green-and-gold hunting dress worn by her at Fontainebleau.  That morning no servant in the Tuileries could be found to bring her breakfast to her chamber.

The next day Dr. Evans, in his own carriage, took her safely out of Paris, in the character of a lady of unsound mind whom he and Madame le Breton were conveying to friends in the country.  Two days later they reached Deauville after several narrow escapes, the empress, on one occasion, having nearly betrayed herself by an effort to stop a man who was cruelly beating his horse.

There were two English yachts lying at Deauville.  On board of one of these Dr. Evans went.  It belonged to Sir John Burgoyne, grandson of the General Burgoyne who surrendered at Saratoga.  Sir John, with his wife, was on a pleasure cruise.  His yacht, the “Gazelle,” was very small, only forty-five tons’ burden, and carried a crew of six men.