Parisian gossip about the Empress.
All gossip still centres on the
Empress.
It certainly is hard to conceive a wilder freak, as far as appearance go, and the details that come over here, and come out into Paris Society through
Belgium papers, are enough to harrow up the outwardly decorous
French, and freeze the marrow in their hones.
The story goes not alone that (as the
Times said.) Her Majesty left the
London Bridge station in a cab (!) but that in that identical vehicle her Majesty had to drive half over
London before she found suitable quarters in any hotel!
All this is commented on in the tone in which the perpetration of some heinous crime would be spoken of, and positively the
Empress's part is very near being taken, so severely is Parisian propriety shocked!
When one thinks of it all, it really seems to be almost natural, and one cannot help recalling certain passages of the earlier days of the poor
Empress's imperial state, and seeing how impatiently she must have borne her splendid letters.
After she had been about a fortnight the wife of
Louis Napoleon, she issued her orders to some of the ladies around her that a walk should be taken in the street of
Paris!
A walk!
Immediately the
grande Martres, Madame la
Princess de'
Essling, made her appearance, saying she was ready to accompany Her Majesty any where in a carriage!
At which the unlucky Empress exclaimed, somewhat tartly, that she neither wanted a carriage nor her company!
This is the answer on record.
And hysterics and nervous attacks ensued, and the once so independent Mdlle.
de Montijo was shut up, ‘"for good and all,"’ as little children term it, and left to meditate on the recent change in her habits of life.
For two years this continued, until at last certain acts on the part of the
Emperor gave his consort the right, as she thought, to her liberty of action.
Whilst her lord was at Plombieres in 1856, the
Empress managed, most innocently, as we should think, to amuse herself in pleasant shooting, &c., at
St. Cloud, and there at no less solemn a personage than
Marshal Pelisses took exception, and advised himself to lecture the
Empress before all her household, telling her the
French did not like such "eccentricities," and the poor Empress cried heartily, and said "she would not do so any more!" Then she went to see the "Toros," at St. Sebastine — a pastime of her own country — and they were fearfully scandalized at that, these over decorous
French; and in short, on the whole, considering the extremely unconventional mode of her unmarried life (prolonged to the age of 27,) the existence of the
Empress Eugenie has not, since she entered the Tuileries, been one of wholly unallayed satisfaction.
Two years ago, to all this was added the intense and harrowing fear of assassination, and since the Orsini attempt this has never entirely ceased.--I have myself often talked with ladies of the household, who every now and then admit that the habitual life at the palace was "distracted by ceaseless alarms; "and it is perfectly well known in a certain set that for weeks together the unfortunate Empress had scarcely done anything but weep and declare that she would set off for
Spain, and fly so dangerous a country as
France.
After all this, can it be wondered at, that she should desire a little freedom, a little amusement, a little absence of the absurd etiquette which it is one of the
Emperor's weakest points to try and surround himself?
The Empress is now with a cousin of her husband's, who, it is true, has for the last year ceased all friendly intercourse with her imperial relative on political grounds, but who will kindly receive and cherish the very amiable lady who comes to her from afar, and who will try to enable her to forget the alarms and apprehensions of her splendid domestic existence here.--
Paris Correspondent of the Literary Gazette. 
