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After the Queen’s visit, Princess Marie arranged to travel to Paris to visit her friend Empress Eugénie. One sunny spring day the Empress invited her along to take a stroll through the Tuileries Gardens with her husband. Empress Eugénie proudly pointed out to the Emperor and Princess Marie her prize red rose recently exhibited in a French Exposition. The Emperor deep in thought merely smiled and kept walking.
“How am I going to ensure peace between France and Germany?” He asked the two women while walking and swinging his cane. Emperor Napoleon III flush from victory over the Austrian-Hungarian empire desired peace with Germany. He was seeking to expand France’s trade and influence on the world stage, and a war would be catastrophic now. He shuddered to think it may even cause the overthrow of his regime however remote that may be.
Princess Marie sensing an opportunity stopped and turned toward the Emperor and his wife. “Your Imperial Highness may I arrange a meeting for you with the Prussian Crown Prince and the other German princes in Baden? You would not have to travel very far, and the German princes would be more comfortable in familiar surroundings.”
The Emperor smiled at his wife. “I accept your offer!” He said dramatically. “I knew Marie would be able to help me.” Empress Eugénie nodded her head in agreement and continued to look out over the Tuileries Palace gardens.
Beforehand, Empress Eugénie suggested to her husband that Princess Marie help arrange a peace conference between France and Germany to prove her loyalty to France. The Emperor had received disturbing reports from French Military Intelligence about the Duchess’s secret meetings with Queen Victoria. Empress Eugénie wanted to dispel any doubts her husband had about his cousin’s sincere loyalty to him. Therefore, satisfied Princess Marie was not a spy, Emperor Napoleon III bowed low to the two women and went back into the Tuileries Palace.
Princess Marie suddenly became nervous about the consequences of failure to arrange the peace conference to her standing in the French Imperial Court. But as she resumed walking, she devised a plan for how to inform her British Intelligence contacts in Scotland Yard in order for them to help her.
As the Emperor suspected, Princess Marie had been secretly reporting her conversations with the French Emperor and his wife to British Intelligence for quite a while. She would request Richard Cordwell attend the peace conference as a diplomat representing Queen Victoria’s government. She would then be able to pass any French secret plans to him immediately to relay to London. She smiled to herself as she finished her stroll through the Tuileries Palace Gardens with the Empress.
Princess Marie was no longer the meek princess that Karolina fondly recalled, so long ago. In fact, she was now able to spy on the Imperial Courts in Europe with ease under the guise of serving them tea.
