y have been one of her
charms. With the impetuosity of her disposition and the intrepidity
that had characterized her girlhood, she found it hard to submit
to the restraints of her position, and the emperor had occasion
frequently to remonstrate with her on her indifference to etiquette
and public opinion. It was not until after her visit to Windsor
in 1855 that she could be induced to establish court rules at the
Tuileries, and to prescribe for herself and others, in public, a
strict system of etiquette. But in her private hours, among her
early friends, in the circle of ladies admitted to her intimacy,
the empress was less discreet. Her impressions were apt to run
into extremes; she indulged in whims like other pretty women; yet
she was never carried by her romantic feelings or her enthusiasm
beyond her power of self-control. Though careless of etiquette in
private life, whenever a great occasion came, she could act with
imperial dignity.

[Footnote 2: Pierre de Lano.]

Although she often experienced ingratitude, she was always generous.
She was as ready to solicit favors and pardons as was the Empress
Josephine. Sometimes she was even sorely embarrassed to find arguments
in favor of her _proteges_. "_Ah, mon Dieu!_" she cried once, when
pleading for the pardon of a workman, "how could he be guilty?
He has a wife and five children to support; he could have had no
time for conspiracy!"

As a wife she was devoted, not only to the public interests of her
husband, but to his personal welfare. She was constantly anxious
lest he should suffer from overwork; and her little select evening
parties, which some people found fault with, were instituted by
her with the chief object of amusing him.

Ben Jonson makes it a reproach against a lady of the sixteenth century
that she would not "suffer herself to be admired." No such reproach
could be addressed to the Empress Eugenie. Few women conscious of
their power to charm will fail to exercise it. In the case of an
empress,--young, lively, of an independent and adventurous spirit, and
very beautiful,--all who approached her thought better of themselves
from her apparent appreciation of their claims to consideration;
and, indeed, in her position was it not the duty of the successor
of Josephine to be gracious and charming to everybody?

Unfortunately the ladies who most enjoyed the intimacy of the Empress
Eugenie were foreigners. She seems to have felt a certain distrust
of F