He lived
for a while with a woman who was not his wife, and deserted her for a girl
of eighteen, whom he also abandoned, in order to devote himself to a
creature in fleshings who rode a bare-backed steed at the Cirque de
l'Imperatrice. When I was first introduced to her "behind the scenes," she
was bestriding a chair, and smoking a pink cigarette, and she addressed me
as _mon petit_. Briefly, the moral atmosphere of Brossard's life was not
such as befitted him to be a mentor of youth.
Let me now go back a little. At the time of the great Paris Exhibition of
1867 I was in my fourteenth year. The city was then crowded with
royalties, many of whom I saw on one or another occasion. I was in the
Bois de Boulogne with my father when, after a great review, a shot was
fired at the carriage in which Napoleon III and his guest, Alexander II of
Russia, were seated side by side. I saw equerry Raimbeaux gallop forward
to screen the two monarchs, and I saw the culprit seized by a sergeant of
our Royal Engineers, attached to the British section of the Exhibition.
Both sovereigns stood up in the carriage to show that they were uninjured,
and it was afterwards reported that the Emperor Napoleon said to the
Emperor Alexander: "If that shot was fired by an Italian it was meant for
me; if by a Pole, it was meant for your Majesty.
Pages:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39