The stairways and corridors in the Tuileries were so dark that they had to be lighted summer and winter; and this, with the bad ventilation, made the palace so unbearable in warm weather that the court spent the summer months away from Paris, at Fontainebleau, St. Cloud, or Biarritz. Of these resorts Napoleon’s favorite was St. Cloud, where he usually went to recuperate from the severe attacks of illness to which he was subject. Here he was quite happy, playing with his dog Nero, a faithful companion for many years, or tending his roses in the palace garden. Eugénie, on her part, preferred Biarritz, in the Pyrenees, and it was owing largely to her that this resort became by far the most popular in France, casting Dieppe, Trouville, and Boulogne completely in the shade. Nowhere in the world could there have been found such a medley of wealth and poverty, aristocrats and adventurers, high-born dames and demi-mondaines of all classes, as at Biarritz in the days of the Second Empire. It had attractions of all sorts, hotels and restaurants, shops and bazars of every description, as well as a casino containing a theatre, concert hall, ball and gaming rooms, from the broad terrace of which there was a most charming view. Opposite the town, on a rocky plateau across a narrow arm of the sea, stood the Château Eugénie. It looked more like a barracks than a palace, and owing to the salt spray flung all around it in time of storm, no sort of vegetation would thrive there; but when the Empress stepped out on her terrace in the morning, the sea lay spread out at her feet. The ever changing lights and shades of sky and water lent variety to the solitary landscape; while looking the other way she could watch the gay equipages rolling by toward the baths. This to her was the ideal combination of nature and civilization. In this beautiful spot Eugénie spent some of her happiest hours, forgetful of the tedium of court life, her husband’s infidelities, and the persecutions of Prince Napoleon and his followers. Here her natural high spirits found vent, and she romped like a child with her little son, or revelled in the sea-bathing, feeling for the first time since her early youth the charms of a life free from excitement or ambitious aims.