“Mme. de M.,” wrote the Empress to the Emperor, “wants the vacancy at The Hague for her husband, and I much wish him to have it.” She added, as one who was worried by repeated applications of this kind: “Comme ça on me laisserait tranquille!”
A week afterwards the Empress wrote: “I saw Mme. de M. on Sunday, and she seemed perfectly satisfied.”
Writing immediately afterwards about another lady--also one of the Royalist group--for whom she had done something, Her Majesty said: “As to Mme. de C., up to now she hasn’t uttered a word of thanks to me. If you should see her--especially if you should see her husband--say that he does not owe his post entirely to his personal merits. As to gratitude, I have my own opinion about that; and, as I never expect any, I am never disappointed.”
These letters reveal a melancholy philosophy, throwing much light upon the Emperor’s entourage, and showing that, if the Sovereigns did their utmost to conciliate members of all parties, they were too often rewarded only with ingratitude by those on whom they had bestowed favours, or to whom they had accorded high positions in the public service.
That the Empress, strong in her own virtue, should have been grievously pained, and sometimes exasperated, by her inflammatory consort’s peccadilloes is not very surprising. That there were “scenes” was but natural. It was, then, all the more to her credit that in public she invariably showed the Emperor the greatest deference; even in her own apartments, if he appeared, as he sometimes did, when the Empress was entertaining friends, she would rise directly he entered the room, and make him a profound reverence. At one time, too, she sought to amuse the Emperor in a variety of ways, and when one or other of her suite mustered up sufficient courage to repeat to her the rumours and the cancans of the hour, Her Majesty would remark: “Really, they blame us for amusing ourselves at the Tuileries! Surely the very least I can do is to give some distraction to the poor Emperor (who is ennuyé all day by politics), and show him some pretty women!”
It need hardly be said that the observation, coupled with what the Empress had previously said touching the conjugal fidelity of women generally, did not tend to diminish the reputation for légèreté which she had acquired even before her accession to the throne. This frivolity, although perhaps it was more apparent than real, was made the most of by certain ladies, and particularly by the Princesse de Metternich.