LETTER TO THE EMPRESS EUGENIA.
A Paris Lettersays:—Lady Montijo has left Paris for Spain. She was extremely desirous of remaining and living in the reflection of her daughter’s grandeur, but Louis Napoleon, who shares in the general prejudice against step-mothers, gave her plainly to understand, that because he had married Eugenia, she must not suppose he had married her whole family. She was allowed to linger six weeks, to have theentréeof the Tuileries, and to see her movements chronicled in thePays. She has at last left us, and the telegraph mentions her arrival at Orleans, on her way to the Peninsula.
A Paris Lettersays:—Lady Montijo has left Paris for Spain. She was extremely desirous of remaining and living in the reflection of her daughter’s grandeur, but Louis Napoleon, who shares in the general prejudice against step-mothers, gave her plainly to understand, that because he had married Eugenia, she must not suppose he had married her whole family. She was allowed to linger six weeks, to have theentréeof the Tuileries, and to see her movements chronicled in thePays. She has at last left us, and the telegraph mentions her arrival at Orleans, on her way to the Peninsula.
A Paris Lettersays:—Lady Montijo has left Paris for Spain. She was extremely desirous of remaining and living in the reflection of her daughter’s grandeur, but Louis Napoleon, who shares in the general prejudice against step-mothers, gave her plainly to understand, that because he had married Eugenia, she must not suppose he had married her whole family. She was allowed to linger six weeks, to have theentréeof the Tuileries, and to see her movements chronicled in thePays. She has at last left us, and the telegraph mentions her arrival at Orleans, on her way to the Peninsula.
A Paris Lettersays:—Lady Montijo has left Paris for Spain. She was extremely desirous of remaining and living in the reflection of her daughter’s grandeur, but Louis Napoleon, who shares in the general prejudice against step-mothers, gave her plainly to understand, that because he had married Eugenia, she must not suppose he had married her whole family. She was allowed to linger six weeks, to have theentréeof the Tuileries, and to see her movements chronicled in thePays. She has at last left us, and the telegraph mentions her arrival at Orleans, on her way to the Peninsula.
There Teba! did not I say you would need all those two-thousand-franc pocket-handkerchiefs before your orange wreath had begun to give signs of wilting? Why did you let your mamma go, you little simpleton? Before Nappy secured your neck in the matrimonial noose, you should have had it put down, in black and white, that Madame Montijo was to live with you till—the next revolution, if you chose to have her. Now you have struck your colours, of course everything will “go by the board.” I tell you, Teba, that a fool is the most unmanageable of all beings. He is as dogged and perverse as a broken-down donkey. You can neither goad nor coax him into doing anything he should do, or prevent his doing what he should not do. You will have to leave Nappy and come over here;—and then everybody will nudge somebody’s elbow and say, “That is Mrs. Teba Napoleon, who does not live with her husband.” And some will say it is your fault; and others will say ’tis his; and all will tell you a world more about it, thanyoucan tellthem.
Then, Mrs. Samuel Snip (who has the next room to yours, who murders the queen’s English most ruthlessly, and is not quite certain whether Barnum or Christopher Columbus discovered America) will have her Paul Pry ear to the key-hole of your door about every other minute (except when her husband is on duty) to find out if you are properly employed;—and no matter what Mrs. Snip learns, or evenif she does not learn anything, she will be pretty certain to report, that, in her opinion, you are “no better than you should be.” If you dress well (with your splendid form and carriage you could not but seem well-dressed) she will “wonder how you got the means to do it;” prefacing her remark with the self-evident truth that, “to be sure, it is none of her business.”
If you let your little Napoleon get out of your sight a minute, somebody will have him by the pinafore and put him through a catechism about his mamma’s mode of living, and how she spends her time. If you go to church, it will be “to show yourself;” if you stay at home, “you are a publican and a sinner.” Do what you will, it will all be wrong: if you do nothing, it will be still worse. Our gentlemen (so called) knowing that you are defenceless, and taking it for granted that your name is “Barkis,” will all stare at you; and the women will dislike and abuse you just in proportion as the opposite sex admire you. Of course you will sweep past them all, with that magnificent figure of yours, and your regal chin up in the air, quietly attending to your own business, and entirely unconscious of their pigmy existence.