asion
of a funeral of a friend, which he could not possibly attend,
he suggested sending his boots instead. "People send their
empty conveyance: I'll send mine," he said.--EDITOR.]

Nevertheless, amidst all this flouting and jeering, the Emperor and his
future consort felt very uncomfortable, but they showed a brave front.
He inferred, rather than said to one and all who advanced objections,
that his love for Mdlle. de Montijo was not the sole motive for his
contemplated union. He wished to induce them into the belief that
political motives were not foreign to it--that he was, as it were,
flinging the gauntlet to monarchical Europe, which, not content with
refusing him a wife, was determined to throw a spoke in his matrimonial
wheel.

Unfortunately, he and his bride felt that they could not altogether
dispense with the pomp and circumstance of courts. Like his uncle,
Napoleon III. was exceedingly fond of grand ceremonial display, and he
set his heart upon his Empress having a brilliant escort of fair and
illustrious women on the day of her nuptials. To seek for such an escort
among the grandes dames of the old noblesse would, he knew, be so much
waste of time; but he was justified in the hope that the descendants of
those who owed some of their titles and most of their fortunes to his
uncle would prove more amenable. In this he was mistaken: both the
Duchesse de Vicence and the Duchesse des Lesparres, besides several
others to whom the highest positions in the Empress's household were
offered, declined the honour. The Duc de Bassano did worse. Much as the
De Caulaincourts and the De Lesparres owed to the son of the Corsican
lawyer, the Marets owed him infinitely more. Yet their descendant, but a
few days before the marriage, went about repeating everywhere that he
absolutely objected to see his wife figure in the suite of the daughter
of the Comtesse de Montijo, "who" (the daughter) "was a little too much
of a posthumous child." He not only relented with regard to the duchesse
at the eleventh hour, but accepted the office of Grand Chambellan, which
office he filled to the end of his life.

In fact, honours and titles went absolutely a-begging in those days. Let
me not be misunderstood. There were plenty of men and women ready to
accept both, and to deck out their besmirched, though very authentic,
scutcheons with them; but of these the Empress, at any rate, would have
none. She would have w