a week--was quite a centre--all the Bonapartists of course, the
diplomatic corps, many strangers, and all the celebrities in
literature and art.

With that exception I never saw nor talked with any member of that
family until I had been some years a widow, when the Empress Eugenie
received me on her yacht at Cowes. When the news came of the awful
tragedy of the Prince Imperial's death in Zululand, W. was Foreign
Minister, and he had invited a large party, with music. W. instantly put
off the party, said there was no question of politics or a Bonapartist
prince--it was a Frenchman killed, fighting bravely in a foreign
country. I always thought the Empress knew about it and appreciated his
act, for during his embassy in London, though we never saw her, she
constantly sent him word through mutual friends of little negotiations
she knew about and thought might interest him, and always spoke very
well of him as a "clear-headed, patriotic statesman." I should have
liked to have seen her in her prime, when she must have been
extraordinarily beautiful and graceful. When I did see her she was no
longer young, but a stately, impressive figure, and had still the
beautiful brow one sees in all her pictures. One of our friends, a very
clever woman and great anti-Bonapartist, told us an amusing story of her
little son. The child was sometimes in the drawing-room when his mother
was receiving, and heard her and all her friends inveighing against the
iniquities of the Imperial Court and the frivolity of the Empress. He
saw the Empress walking one day in the Bois de Boulogne. She was
attracted by the group of children, stopped and talked to them. The boy
was delighted and said to his governess: "Elle est bien jolie,
l'Imperatrice, mais il ne faut pas le dire a Maman." (The Empress is
very pretty, but one must not say it to mother.)