“It is all your fault!” he shouted, glaring wildly at the doctor, then rushed away as suddenly as he had come. The three passengers looked at one another in amazement, and seasick, exhausted, and disheartened as she was, Eugénie could not help laughing at the Englishman’s frenzy of terror. Still the brave little _Gazelle_ struggled on against wind and wave until at last the storm began to subside, and about three o’clock the next morning, after what seemed a miraculous escape, they reached the harbor of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
With what feelings must the ex-Empress have once more beheld this coast! Must she not involuntarily have recalled that first visit with her mother to England so long ago, in her joyous care-free youth? And again, when she took that first important step toward recognition by the European sovereigns, and as the favorite of fortune, gay, courted, and admired, landed amid the enthusiastic shouts of the people, as the honored guest of Queen Victoria? To-day she turned to England for refuge—no longer the beautiful sovereign of a great European power, but a wretched fugitive, an unhappy woman exhausted with fatigue and faint for lack of food. Those shores on which she had once been hailed with triumph now in the gray dawn were sole witnesses of her mute despair.
Early on the morning of the eighth of September, the landlord of the Hotel York in Ryde was awakened by a loud knocking, and found a man and two women standing outside the door. They had gone first to another inn, but had been refused admittance, their appearance was so bedraggled and forlorn. Yet worn and travel-stained as they were, the doors of the York were opened to them without hesitation, and here the Empress and her companions were able to rest for a few hours after their exhausting journey. That same afternoon, however, they went on to Brighton, where the Empress heard that the Prince Imperial had escaped through Belgium and landed at Dover the preceding day. Through all her own danger and distress she had been tortured by constant suspense as to the fate of her son. Now, therefore, she hurried at once to Hastings where she hoped to meet him; and that day witnessed the reunion of mother and child. But how different, alas, was this meeting from that of which Eugénie had dreamed, when the Prince—hailed with cheers from the troops and the people, and followed by a mother’s proud hopes—had departed “à Berlin” under his father’s care!