Spiritualism was the fad of the season, and the empress caught the
infection. The emperor, who was present at many of the exhibitions
at the Tuileries, was also, it is said, much impressed by some
of them, especially by a mysterious invisible hand laid firmly
on his shoulder, and by an icy breath that passed over his face.
But although the emperor, always indulgent to his wife, resisted
at first the advice of his counsellors to get rid of Home, he was
forced at last to put an end to the _seances_ at the Tuileries,
Fontainebleau, and Biarritz. The spirits "summoned" had had the
imprudence to obtrude upon him their own views of his policy. When
the alliance with Italy and a probable war with Austria were under
discussion in the cabinet, the spirit-inspired pencil at the Tuileries
scrawled these words: "The emperor should declare war and deliver
Italy from the Austrians." Not long afterwards, the vulgar presumption
of Home, who had accompanied the court to Biarritz, provoked the
emperor, and caused him to give ear to the earnest remonstrances of
his Minister for Foreign Affairs. He gave orders that Home should
appear at the Tuileries no more.

[Footnote 1: Pierre de Lana.]

Home died not long after in Germany, forgotten by the world of
fashion, but leaving behind him a little circle of ardent believers.

The story of the emperor's later life seems to me to be one full
of pathos and of pain. It is the record of a man who knew himself
to be slowly dying, whose physical strength was ebbing day by day,
but who was bearing up under the vain hope of accomplishing the
impossible. One admires his extreme patience, his uncomplaining
perseverance, as he tried to roll the stone of Sisyphus, yet with
unspoken misgivings in his heart that it would escape from him and
crush the hopes of his life, as it rolled back out of his hands.

"Poor emperor!" says the eye-witness who beheld him in his hour
of triumph, before the grand-stand, in 1867, at the great review.
"He was a friend to all, and he fell through his friends. He was
very true to England, whatever he may have been to other countries;
but England failed him, unfortunately in Denmark, fortunately in
Mexico, and fatally in 1870."[1]

[Footnote 1: Blackwood's Magazine.]

It seems, too, as if the world forgets now--what assuredly must
be remembered hereafter in history--that it was he who relieved
Europe from the treaties of Vienna, and asserted the claims of
nationalities; t