She came late. As she entered, the sensation was so great that dancing stopped, even the music broke and fell into silence, the Empress came forward a little, the Emperor came all the way, and hastily thrusting a minor German royalty upon the Empress, he led out Countess Castiglione himself.

Her beauty was really faultless. It was startling. Her very enemies, and she soon had plenty, could not but admit that she was radiantly lovely. Indeed, she was so beautiful that she could afford to be consciously conscious of her beauty. In public she was always patting her hair, arranging her dress, looking into the mirrors as she passed them; and it is the very first quality of beauty, if not the highest, which can thus afford to arrange itself in public.

She soon gained such self-confidence from the reception accorded her that she began to be daring in her gowns, and the records of some of her triumphs have come down to us as freshly as if they had occurred yesterday. She was individual, too; did things in her own way, talked as no one else talked, and certainly dressed as no one else did.

It was in the latter item that she had the misfortune to offend the Empress, who had conservative ideas about dress, while the famous Florentine knew no bounds to her invention and her audacity. When all wore hoops, she frequently appeared in close-fitting dress. Her low-cut evening bodices scandalised the elderly and enchanted the beauty lovers. Fancy-dress balls were then most fashionable, and here the Countess excelled.

She wore one costume as Queen of Hearts, which drew forth a very acid comment from the Empress as to the position in which she wore the principal of the many hearts with which she was adorned. The Emperor Napoleon, never cold to beauty, was quite swept off his feet by the Countess. Indeed, she said quite frankly one day to a friend, "My mother was a fool. If she had brought me to Paris a little earlier, instead of marrying me to Castiglione, you would have seen an Italian instead of a Spaniard reigning at the Tuileries."

A Mistress of Intrigue

All this time, while apparently thinking of nothing but society, she was furthering the designs of Cavour. She flattered the Emperor until he did everything that she wanted, and even roused him, apathetic as he was, into an active foreign policy. All day she drove from Minister's house to Minister's house with portfolios of papers, talking persuasively and rapidly in all the languages known to Europe, and working both behind the scenes and before them with such energy that she was remembered to exclaim one day, "I have created Italy and saved the Papacy!"

On the private side of her life there were plenty of adventures and romances. Napoleon III., received by her in a dim and silent house one evening, would have been stabbed to the heart on a dark landing only for his faithful attendant. The Countess was escorted to the Italian frontier, but when she got there she explained to her captors so many incidents in the secret history of French politics that she was looking forward to spreading about Europe, that she was escorted back again with as little delay as possible.

Having thus asserted her position, she went to Turin, and, with one of her curious whims, shut herself up with her little son, whom she educated very carefully, but without the least spark of affection for him. No one saw her. One servant looked after her. If any visitor did penetrate to her presence, he found her dumb.

At last she was won back to Paris. Her brilliant life began again at once. We find her staying at Compiegne by the week together. Her friends were drawn from all ranks in which men of eminence are found. Her political intrigues went on all the time, yet she never seemed too busy to be merely the lovely woman of any festivity. On December 26, 1876, she moved into a house in the Place Vendome.

Her Good Genius

Perhaps the most pleasing of the many adventures in her life was her long and unbroken friendship with General Estancelin. He managed to evoke all that was soft and gentle in her. Kept apart by the fact that she was married, they maintained an unsullied friendship. Forty years from the time when she first met him she celebrated what she called her pearl wedding with him. She has left words about him which prove that she really had a heart, though it must be admitted that it was mostly kept at her banker's.

A little anecdote illustrates well her audacity of speech. Shortly after midnight she arrived at the Palais Royal at a reception given in honour of the Empress. She met Napoleon and Eugenie coming downstairs. "You come late, Countess," said Napoleon. "It is you who leave early, sire!" she replied, with her head in the air.

One must pass over many wonderful stories of her success in the fashionable tableaux vivants, and of how one day she electrified Paris by choosing to appear as a nun, all her hair hidden, and nothing of lovely face and figure to be seen save merely the fine and regular features. When she sent for a doctor she would not let him in until she was dressed in silks, gleaming with jewels, and lying on a bed of fur and lace. Yet she really was ill, and anxious for relief.

The End Of The Story

So the brilliant life went on, till suddenly we find her left much alone by the fall of the Empire. Her beauty, too, was beginning to wane. She felt her power weakening. The exquisite mouth was the first to show the advance of years. It fell in, and became a hard line. She stayed among her friends until after the war of 1870, and then very quietly she retired to an appartement in the Place Vendome. There, for many years, she lived behind the closed shutters, unseen by all save two or three old friends, served by only two domestics.

Not a looking-glass was allowed in the place, all the rooms were hung with dark blue, and at night the very gas-burners were shaded. Now and then at night, heavily veiled, she would go out, and crossing the Place Vendome to the Rue Castiglione, she would gaze up at an empty house there, and then return to her seclusion. It was the house where she had reigned as queen of beauty and queen of power.