“You mistake, my friend; it was not I, but our gracious Empress who spoke to you.”
“Never mind, sister,” interposed Eugénie, “he could have given me no more beautiful name—” a saying which was repeated and long remembered among the people.
Yet much as Eugénie had endeared herself to the masses by her fearlessness and kind-heartedness during the cholera epidemic, it was not long before the feeling against her on account of her bigotry, extravagance, and frivolity again came to the surface, not alone in court circles but throughout the whole Empire. To lay to the Empress’s account all the follies and indiscretions, all the worldliness and self-seeking, of Parisian life at that time, would be most unfair; yet it cannot be denied that her influence had much to do with the luxury and the eccentricities of fashion that prevailed. Doomed by her rank to a life of idleness and inactivity, the lack of proper food for heart and mind forced her energies to find outlet in trifles. The gratification of her vanity became the chief object of life. With the sceptre of France, her slender hand also grasped that of the world of fashion—a domain in which she was no beneficent sovereign, but a tyrant whose yoke was borne without a murmur. Even when she was a young girl her costumes excited envy and admiration for their originality, and at every watering-place she visited, bungling imitations of the beautiful Spaniard’s _toilettes_ were to be seen in hotels and gaming halls. In Paris her influence soon began to be felt, and almost before her name had become familiar to the people her waistcoats were being copied and sold by all the fashionable tailors, and the high-heeled riding boots she had worn at Compiègne were adopted by every French court lady. Every morning, as we have seen, before going to mass, Eugénie devoted one or two hours at least to the study of dress.
Her bedchamber, with its adjoining oratory, was at some distance from her other apartments and lacked all stamp of individuality. The bed, heavily draped with rich hangings, was raised on a dais, and resembled a throne. In this room she kept the Golden Rose that was presented to her by the Pope, and beside the bed stood one of the palm branches sent her each year by the Holy Father with his blessing. Yet here she spent far less time during the day than in the dressing-room next it, where there were several large movable mirrors enabling her to see herself from all points. On the floor above, connected by elevator and speaking tube with her private apartments, were the rooms occupied by her waiting-women. Here was a vast store of silks, velvets, and satins, with gowns and every conceivable article of wearing apparel. Ranged along the wall were rows of dresses and wraps of all sorts and colors, with receptacles for hats, shoes, fans, parasols, etc. In one of the rooms were several life-sized forms which the Empress had had made, exactly reproducing her own figure in size and height, and dressed like living women to the smallest detail; for in spite of the pains taken by the modistes and tailors to win her approval, it was seldom that a costume entirely suited her.