Saturday, 21 June 1879

For nearly thirty-six hours now I have scarcely stopped weeping. I went to bed exhausted yesterday. We had two Russians to dinner — Obidine and Sévastianoff, gentlemen-in-waiting to the Emperor, and Tchoumakoff and Bojidar.

But I was good for nothing.

My sceptical and bantering spirit had departed. I have lost relatives before and had other griefs, but I do not think I have ever wept for anyone as I weep for one who has just died. And it is all the more striking in that, all things considered, it should not touch me at all — I ought rather to rejoice at it. Yesterday at noon I was leaving the atelier when Julian whistled up the speaking tube for the maid, who put her ear to it and at once said to us, rather shaken:

— Ladies, Monsieur Julian sends word that the Prince Imperial is dead.

I assure you I gave a real cry and sat down on the coal box. And as everyone was talking at once:

— A little quiet, if you please, ladies. It is official, the telegram has just come. He was killed by the Zulus. It is Monsieur Julian who tells me so.

That rumour had already been put about before, too, when they brought me L’Estafette with these words in large letters: Death of the Prince Imperial. I can tell you, I was thunderstruck.

Besides, whatever party one belongs to, whether one is French or foreign, it is impossible not to feel the general impression, which is one of stupefaction.

This dreadful, this frightful, this untimely death is a terrible thing. Read the newspapers I am keeping for you; I would only repeat the moving, true and beautiful words of Albert Wolff of the Figaro. [Missing]

But I will tell you what no newspaper says, which is that the English are cowards and murderers. None of this is natural. There are one or more culprits, infamous, bought.

Does one expose a Prince, the hope of a party?

A son... No, I do not believe there is a single wild beast that would not be moved at the thought of the mother. The most frightful misfortunes, the cruellest losses always leave something, a ray, a hint of consolation, of hope... here there is NOTHING. One may say without fear of being mistaken that it is a grief such as there has never been. He went away because of her: she bored him, tormented him, did not give him 500 francs a month and made life difficult for him; the boy left on bad terms with his mother.

Do you see the full atrocity of it?! Do you see that woman?

The monster who broke the news to her would have done better to kill her.

I went to the atelier and Robert-Fleury paid me many compliments, but I came home to snivel again, and then I went to Madame Gavini’s, where everything is in mourning and everyone’s eyes are swollen, down to the concierge’s. Monsieur Rouher remained half an hour without speaking; they thought it was all over with him, and then he did not stop weeping the whole time. And Madame Rouher had fits of nerves all evening, crying out that her husband was going to die and that she wanted to die. Here Madame Gavini interrupts her story and, with conviction: Really, she says, at such moments one ought to arrange not to have attacks of nerves, it is most inconvenient, she adds very seriously...

I held back my tears, for no one would have understood what was the matter with me, but I could not help smiling when I heard Madame Gavini telling her story to some ladies in mourning and saying that Madame Rouher, on learning the news, fell with all four hooves in the air. They are going into mourning for six months, “no doubt we shall tire of it before then, but the first days, you understand...”

These English have always behaved hideously towards the Bonapartes, who have always had the stupidity to turn to that ignoble England, against which I feel an utter hatred and fury.

I thought of Cassagnac at once, and I rejoiced to see him ruined; but since then this murdered child, this innocent, this angel, this poor hero has grieved me so much that the idea of seeing the future greatness of the Acards lost, perhaps forever, does not console me. After all, people get carried away and weep over a novel. How can one not be stirred to the depths of one’s soul by this appalling catastrophe, by this horrible, odious, heart-rending end!

I thought at once that Cassagnac would turn to Jérôme’s family, and that is in fact what has happened. At yesterday’s meeting Cassagnac set himself up as leader beside young Victor, hoping straight away to play Rouher to him; but everything has been settled: Monsieur Rouher is to return on Tuesday with the decisive news, and Cassagnac ended by rallying and saying: Monsieur Rouher, you know very well that you are still our leader and that you will always find in me your most faithful lieutenant!! He knows very well, the sly fellow, that the unhappy old man is finished.

In short, there is a whole party out on the street. They need a prince, if only to keep up appearances, and I believe they will not split up; some, the least compromised, will go over to the Republic, but the others will go on supporting some shadow or other. Who knows, besides? When the King of Rome died,¹ did people not think that everything was over?

To die? At such a moment! To die at twenty-three, killed by savages² and fighting for the English!!

I believe that in the depths of their hearts his cruellest enemies feel a kind of remorse.

I have read all these newspapers, even those that insult him, and I have watered them with my tears. Were I French, a man, a Bonapartist, I could not be more revolted, more outraged, more grieved. But just think of that boy whom the jeers of the filthy radical papers drove away, the boy who was attacked, murdered by savages.

The cries he uttered, the desperate calls, the suffering, the horror of helplessness. To see oneself dying in some unknown corner, dreadful, abandoned, almost handed over. And then, to go off like that all alone with Englishmen.

And the mother.

My first thought was of Cassagnac, the second of the mother, and the third was this: there was a stain on the name of Bonaparte: Sedan. The Prince Imperial has washed out that stain and saved the dynasty.

Now there is nothing left to reproach the Bonapartes with, and if the legend of the first was worn out, there is the new legend of this poor dead boy.

And the English papers have the infamy to insinuate that there was no danger in the place where the reconnaissance was being made. Can there be any safety in such a country, among savages, enemies, for a troop of a few men?

One must be mad or an idiot to believe it. But read the details. They were left there three days, and that Carey³ noticed only too late that the Prince was missing.

On seeing the Zulus he ran away with the others without troubling about the Prince. No, you see, to see it printed, in their report, in their newspapers, and to tell oneself that this nation is not exterminated, that one cannot annihilate their accursed island and that cold, barbarous, perfidious, infamous people! Oh! if it had been in Russia, why, our soldiers would have got themselves killed to the last man!

And these infamous wretches abandoned him, handed him over!

But do read the details, and tell me you are not struck by so much infamy, such cowardice!

Does one run away without defending one’s comrades!

And they will not hang Lieutenant Carey. No, it is the Prince who is killed and Monsieur Georges Babanine who lives. It is the Acard girl who marries Paul de Cassagnac.

Madame Gavini came, and many others. Madame Brunet-Capdeville (from the Lesseps household) and her niece.

Madame de Bailleul dined with us, and I asked her to drop the following note into the Figaro’s letter box on her way, and at the Pays:

Ah! if it were printed, and if it could really get that wretch tried, I should be happy!

People readily believe in the attachment of an old servant; why not believe in that of old Rouher? Let him be whatever you like, but for thirty years he has lived the life of his masters.

And the mother, the Empress, poor Empress.

The thing is that, laughing all the while, I had grown attached to her, to the Prince, to the party, and when I think that it is over, lost, annihilated!! Nothing left “but a poor mother dressed in black”.

I do not know whether one can give the name of man to anyone who would not bow with respect before her as before the greatest, the most venerable of Majesties.

There are people who consider that other mothers have lost their only child and that this grief is a grief like any other.

I would not even do people so devoid of heart, of finesse, of intelligence and of discernment the honour of a reply.

That either pushes far off or brings much nearer the moment when Madame Couvelet⁴ will be received at court. Seriously, I gave it little thought, wholly taken up with the terrible impression of the moment.

It amuses me to have wept so sincerely for this poor boy.

But it is not over. I tried to wear out this impression, and I read the newspapers and talked about it, but I am not used to it yet. I shall never get used to it.

It is like Dumas fils’s improbable, infamous and revolting Roman d’une femme⁵. There are events over which centuries pass and which always remain heart-rending and horrible.

I am quite astonished to have wept sincerely over a thing that touches me so little... Yet I reproach myself for not having hidden my red eyes better at the atelier; but I was proud to have a good heart, without ulterior motive, without selfishness.

If it were not ridiculous, I would go into mourning with conviction, out of respect and out of grief.

For a moment I hoped that Paul de Cassagnac would attach himself to nothing and be utterly lost; that would have pleased me, because I should have had the right to be generous, devoted, useful perhaps.

No, you see, this death is a barbarity, a terrible, frightful thing.

All these tears give me a headache and make me as ill as a person in good health can be.