At the château a landau was ready, drawn by two Russian horses, black, with long manes and long tails. The Empress, in travelling dress, was waiting for Metternich. Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, Cossé-Brissac, and Poniatowski got into another carriage, and the party started for Paris at top speed. During this midnight drive not a soul was visible--not even a solitary drunkard.
When the Empress’s carriage crossed the Avenue Marigny it stopped; Metternich alighted and walked to his Embassy, which he rented from Her Majesty, who owned the house.[91] Ten minutes later the Empress reached the Tuileries; General d’Autemarre and his aide-de-camp awaited her. There was an air of desolation throughout the Palace. The rooms through which the Empress passed were empty. The curtains had been taken from the windows. The furniture was covered by striped stuff. The chairs were ranged in rows close to the walls. The pictures, busts, garnitures of the fireplaces--all were swathed in cloths.
Ministers trooped in immediately, followed by Marshal Baraguay d’Hilliers, commanding the army of Paris; Trochu, General Chabaud-Latour, and a few others, summoned from their beds by the Empress’s orders. The capital must be put in an immediate state of defence. The Emperor had said it, the Empress had said it, and now the Government said it. There was still an Ollivier Ministry; but its days were numbered.
It must have been verging on four o’clock, the daylight was streaming into the Palace, when another cipher telegram was brought to the Empress. In it the Emperor answered his wife’s request for an explanation of the concluding words of the previous despatch--the last she was to receive at St. Cloud. From the new message all learnt that no telegram direct from Marshal MacMahon (announcing his defeat) had been received at Metz; that news had come, according to the Emperor, from “General de Laigle.” What was meant was “Colonel Klein de Kleinenburg.” But it did not occur to anyone at the Tuileries that there was no such person as “General de Laigle,” and the message, blunder included, was sent off to the _Journal Officiel_, which published it at eleven o’clock, to the mystification of all Paris!