This impression was later removed by a fine old Spaniard
whom I met in Constantinople. He was called de Pratt and was in some way connected with the Montijo family. He told me that when, after 1879, the Empress was allowed by the Republican Government to return to France he accompanied her upon her first painful visit to Paris. They stayed at the Continental Hotel, from which she could look down upon the riding-school which was all that remained of her palace of the Tuileries. She was calm and proud and she took his arm as they walked in the Tuileries gardens. When they left the gardens there was a. gate-keeper standing by the golden gate with a bunch of keys. His jaw dropped and the keys fell from his hands. " L'Imperatrice," he gasped. Even that dramatic recognition did not , ruffle her imperturbability ; she made a slight inclination of her head. I like also the stories which Ethel Smythe tells about her. The story of when the Empress got cut off by the crowd in the piazza at Venice and how Ethel Smythe and the equerry stood on chairs at a cafe, knowing that they would recognise her by the swan-like move- ment of her sunshade as she walked. The story of Armistice day in 1918, when Ethel Smythe found her actually sparkling with triumph. " I have been down there to tell them," she said, pointing to the mausoleum in which lay her husband and her son.
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