Cold and calculating as was Napoleon III., it drove him out of _his_, for in every respect such a marriage was an unwise and an impolitic one. It lent to his new-founded throne neither the lustre of an alliance with royalty nor the popularity that might have been gained by the selection of a Frenchwoman as the partner of his fortunes. The Spanish blood of the countess de Teba made her obnoxious in the eyes of many of her future subjects. Moreover, the antecedents of the lady were not altogether without reproach. Not that any actual stigma had ever clung to her character, but she had always been looked upon in European circles as that anomalous character in such society, a fast girl. Stories, some true and some false, were circulated respecting her follies and her escapades. Evidently, if Caesar's wife should be above suspicion, she was not the person who should have been selected to become the wife of Caesar. The fact of the emperor's interest in the fair foreigner was revealed by an incident, slight in itself and only important by the emotions which it called forth. At one of the small intimate reunions at Compiegne, Mademoiselle de Montijo happened, while dancing, to entangle her feet in the long folds of her train, and she fell with some violence to the floor. The extreme anxiety and distress manifested by the emperor acted as a revelation to all present. A stormy opposition to the projected alliance was at once organized among the familiars of the emperor--the men who had aided in his elevation, and to whom it was too recent for them to stand in awe of him. MM. de Morny and de Persigny in particular were violent in their opposition. In fact, the latter went so far as to tell the emperor at the close of a long and stormy interview on the subject that it was hardly worth while to have made a _coup d'etat_ to end it in such a manner. M. de Morny argued and reasoned with his imperial brother, but neither the violence of Persigny nor the arguments of De Morny made any impression on the cold and inflexible will of Napoleon III., and a few days later the countess made her appearance at one of the court-balls in a dress looped and wreathed with the imperial emblem-flower, the violet. The emperor, advancing toward her, presented her with a superb bouquet of the same significant blossoms. The meaning of that little scene was fully understood by the spectators. The marriage was irrevocably decided upon, and all that they had to do was to submit to the imperial will and make ready to offer their homage to the new empress. With the solitary exception of Prince Napoleon, the imperial family submitted with a good grace to the matrimonial projects of their chief. The Princess Mathilde in particular, although the marriage would depose her from the place that she then occupied as the first lady of the court, declared her willingness to bear the train of the new empress in public if such a duty should be required of her, as it had been of the sisters of the