The magnificent entertainments given by the Prince-President in the Élysée Palace, and the yet more splendid ones that followed at the Tuileries after he became Emperor, had been presided over with tact and grace by his cousin Mathilde, daughter of the ex-King of Westphalia. Fifteen or sixteen years before, during a visit which Mathilde de Montfort had paid to Arenenberg, the residence of Queen Hortense, there had been some talk of a marriage between her and Louis Napoleon. Hortense, who loved her niece with all a mother’s tenderness, had looked forward with joy to a union so suitable in every respect, and it had been agreed upon in a family council of Bonapartes. But the Prince’s first premature attempt to secure his uncle’s throne put an end to the plan, and Mathilde was married, in 1841, to the millionaire Prince of San Donato, Anatole Demidoff. After a few years of childless and unhappy marriage they separated, the Princess retiring to a villa near Paris, whence she was summoned to the capital by her cousin when he became President. The youthful lovers had each led a stormy life since their last meeting, and the romantic attachment that had drawn them together at Arenenberg had long since evaporated. In its place a firm and quiet friendship had arisen, and for the second time Napoleon thought seriously of marrying his cousin. It was the dearest wish of all the Bonapartes; but again fate intervened, this time by the Church’s refusal to annul the Princess’s marriage with Demidoff. The Prince-President found himself forced therefore to seek elsewhere for a bride.
He sued in vain for the hand of a Russian Princess, and was refused in turn by a sister of the King of Spain, and the Portuguese Duchess of Braganza. However alluring may have been the chance of becoming sovereign of France, these princesses had little desire to trust their fate in the hands of an adventurer. Well-meaning friends next drew his attention to the poor but beautiful Carola de Wasa, a cousin of King Gustavus the Fourth of Sweden, afterwards Queen of Saxony. An envoy was sent to negotiate preliminaries, and her family requested time for consideration; but the Princess, who was most unfavorably impressed with Napoleon’s portrait, protested with tears against the proposed marriage. Beside himself at these repeated rebuffs, the Prince swore to win the daughter of some royal house if forced to do it sword-in-hand, and continued in his quest. Through his friend Lord Malmesbury, he urged Queen Victoria to arrange an alliance between himself and her cousin, Princess Adelaide; and though some objections were raised by the Queen and Prince Consort, the matter was still under consideration when, on January 19, 1853, the world was amazed by the following paragraph which appeared in _La Patrie_, the semi-official organ of Paris, and was copied without comment in all the other journals: