In the autumn of 1868 I spent ten or twelve days at Compiègne—during the customary succession of festivities provided for the entertainment of guests at the château—with the object of obtaining sketches for the “Illustrated London News.” It will be remembered it was at Compiègne some sixteen years before that Louis Napoleon, who had then determined on assuming the long coveted imperial purple, asked Mademoiselle Eugénie de Montijo to share his somewhat shadowy throne—an incident that may possibly have had something to do with the partiality which both the emperor and empress evinced for this place of residence in after years.

Every autumn while the Court was sojourning at Compiegne invitations were issued for four or five separate series of guests, including, in addition to the ordinary habitués of the Tuileries, distinguished foreigners, diplomatists, political celebrities, savants, literary men, artists, and individuals of good social standing, all of whom were received on a footing of equality unknown in any other European Court, and were fêted and entertained almost from the hour they set foot within the walls of the palace until the eve of their departure. It used jocularly to be said that the first series of guests were persons of consequence whom it was necessary to invite, that the second were bores, that the third were chosen for their gaiety, and that the fourth were serious people—academicians and the like—who were naturally scandalised at all the surrounding frivolity.

Political intrigue played no inconsiderable part at Compiegne under the second empire, and now and again various European potentates accepted Napoleon's often interested hospitality.