“It is the most charming way of making a journey.… We were traveling at a terrifying speed.… But the jolting is hard on the stomach!” 1
—DELPHINE GAY DE GIRARDIN DESCRIBING HER FORTY-FIVE-KILOMETER-PER-HOUR JOURNEY ABOARD PEREIRE’S FIRST PASSENGER TRAIN, FROM PARIS TO SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, IN AUGUST 1835
“There has been much talk about you and your financial dealings.” 2
—LOUIS NAPOLÉON TO AUGUSTE DE MORNY
On an August afternoon in 1849, a well-dressed fifty-year-old gentleman, dapper of stature and comfortable of girth, sat on the terrace of the spa at Baden, as he always did at this time of year. Hardly handsome, with a wide brow, heavy face, and a remarkably serious expression, clearly this was not a man who invited interruption. On the table before him lay the latest newspapers from Frankfurt, Paris, and London. “I was going through the papers,” he later recalled, “and in my lazy state read everything including the advertisements. I was struck by one in particular, it was [Jules] Mirès’s piece about his S[ocié]té Financière de la Caisse des Actions Réunies, capitalized at five million francs. Its profits were impressive based on such a modest investment. I said to myself if Mirès’s one-man-operation could do that well, then a fully comprehensive organization with far greater financial backing could carry out large scale operations including major industrial developments.”3
On his return to the French capital, Finance Minister Achille Fould approached the Pereire brothers, Émile and Isaac, who had published articles on this subject and who, moreover, were men of known “character and intelligence.”
* * *
Back in the spring of 1849, the French had been preparing for legislative elections set for the fourteenth of May, and Auguste de Morny was again running as deputy for the Auvergne. But even here in an electorally friendly area where Morny was well known and an important landowner and employer (for his Bourdon sugar refineries, near Clermont), elections required a liberal distribution of gold, and as usual he was for the moment broke. “If my tailor had not extended me credit, I would not have had a stitch to wear,” he informed his stepmother, Margaret, the Countess de Flahaut. In fact the situation at that time was far more critical than that, for all four of the drafts he had attempted to cash in had been rejected by the bank. Desperate, he had paid a visit to the Élysée to see his brother, President Bonaparte, who then countersigned those same four bank drafts. On resubmitting them, they were returned once again for “insufficient funds,” only saved at the eleventh hour by publisher Louis Hachette—Morny’s business partner in various ventures—who obtained the money from the recently created Comptoir d’Escompte, or Discount Bank, on the guarantee of Alfred Mosselman (Fanny Le Hon’s brother), who like Hachette held a major share in that private bank.4
* * *
With the aid of Finance Minister Achille Fould, the first thing Louis Napoléon had done in January 1852 was to concentrate on the problems afflicting the national economy. Vast amounts of money had to be injected, made available to French financial, commercial, and industrial markets, if the country was to shake itself free of the past stagnant half century and create a vibrant, modern, new France.
To begin with, the new banking–credit facilities would have to be flexible and plentiful enough to fund and support the creation of an extensive modern national transportation grid capable of facilitating new commercial and industrial enterprises. An entirely new—and as yet practically nonexistent—national rail network was the sine qua non for the development of the nation’s commerce and industry. By January 1852, a few small railways had served passengers between Paris and the English Channel. The rest of the country was basically still a desert, with a total of only 3,910 kilometers of track (a quarter of what Louis Napoléon had earlier found in Great Britain, whose development in all fields remained his model to emulate). Moreover, the British had factories manufacturing everything France needed, from rails to locomotives, and upon whom the French would have largely to rely during the early days before French industry was capable of catching up.
First, financing was needed, and immediately, with which to launch these operations, and one of the last acts Morny had performed before leaving office as minister of the interior in January 1852 had been to make government funds available for this purpose. He and Louis Napoléon were of one mind in this respect. Long-term funding at low rates of interest would be required, made available through new credit institutions.
The Comptoir d’Escompte, had been founded back in 1848, but with a mere twenty million francs, it was hardly adequate for serious industrial projects. In that same year leftist politicians attempted to nationalize the early French railways but were voted down, or there would never have been the development that was to follow. Meanwhile, Louis Napoléon’s finance minister, Achille Fould, upon returning from Baden back in the summer of 1849, had begun working with Émile and Isaac Pereire to create that new type of financial institution that would provide the large-scale financing required for the expansion of French railways, industry, and public works. And in November 1852, they had successfully launched the Crédit Mobilier.
On the fifteenth of November, the day on which the then prince-president signed the decree creating the Crédit Mobilier, James de Rothschild in a most unusual action broke cover and personally criticized Louis Napoléon for this act. By authorizing it, Rothschild argued, “their bank will be able to enter and control the company boards of directors managing every railway line, and every mining company in the country.” In brief, Pereire’s Crédit Mobilier would obtain business and profits that in the past had been the prized fiefdom and monopoly of Rothschild and the other traditional private banking houses.5
Initially capitalized at 60 million francs, or $774 million (that figure soon to be doubled), the Crédit Mobilier issued 40,000 shares at 500 francs per share. Benoît Fould, a conservative banker, and brother of finance minister Achille, was named president, and the ubiquitous Count de Morny (with a generous inducement of cash and free stock in his pocket) was named to its board of directors, complete with an additional salary for that service, and in turn attracted important new investors: the Duke of Mouchy (a Noaille cousin of Morny), and the equally wealthy Rafaele Ferrari (the Duke of Galliera), Ferdinand de Lesseps, several influential Jewish bankers, and hundreds of other investors from the Bourse and foreign markets. Initially the Pereires and members of their family, including Adolphe d’Eichtal, along with the Fould brothers, held controlling interest before it began its impressive expansion. James de Rothschild, however, declined to associate himself with his former protégés and their new institution—a bit of petty jealousy, perhaps, since he would emerge as a vigorous opponent of the Pereires in their future railway endeavors when they were becoming a real challenge.
The Crédit Mobilier was in fact an instant success in a market hitherto starved of large-scale investment capital, sealed with the official authorization of the state, thanks in large part to Morny and the Fould brothers; its shares soared from 500 to 2,110 francs, and the swift development of the nation’s railways followed.6
The Crédit Mobilier, along with the banker Charles Laffitte, of the Laffitte banking house and a fellow Jockey Club friend of Morny, financed the railways into Normandy—connecting Paris with Rouen, Le Havre, Dieppe, Caen, Cherbourg, Rennes, and Brest. France now had freight and passenger service from Paris to the English Channel. Other emerging railway concessions, also refused financing by Rothschild, were completed thanks to the Crédit Mobilier, including François Bartholony’s Lyon–Geneva line, the Besançon Company, and the great Paris-Strasbourg line. Crédit Mobilier funded the Compagnie des Ardennes of Mouchy, members of the Noailles family, and Baron Seillière. Naturally the Crédit Mobilier also funded the railways launched by the Pereires in the southern and eastern regions of France, including their Compagnie du Midi, linking Bordeaux-Bayonne-Pyrénées, and on the Mediterranean side, the Perpignan–Spanish frontier line. Pereire also built the Bordeaux-Sette line. The Crédit Mobilier was excluded from the most important railway network, however, the PLM’s Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean (Marseilles) lines and that of Paris-Orléans-Bordeaux—controlled by the banker François Bartholony and Paulin Talabot.7 Pereire very badly wanted to have a long-distance rail service running out of the French capital, but when he later applied for a concession in 1856, Louis Napoléon’s two new cabinet members, Eugène Rouher, minister of agriculture, commerce, and public works, and Pierre Magne, finance minister, both of them very close to Morny, turned him down.
On April 21, 1853, Count de Morny brought off what was to prove the supreme coup of his life when Louis Napoléon obliged him by issuing an imperial decree authorizing the creation of the Grand Central to establish its lucrative railway network, which would be strongly supported by the highly productive mines in the south (such as the Mines d’Aubin, and the Houillières de Carmaux). It included rail links between Limoges-Agen, and Lyon-Bordeaux via the Massif Central and Morny’s and Rouher’s properties, between Clermont Ferrand and Montauban, and the Rhône-Loire.
Morny’s reward was indeed “imperial”: he was named president of the new Grand Central, with an equally charming salary, not to mention 30,000 shares gratis worth 15 million francs, without counting their biannual dividends.8 When news of Morny’s latest coup reached the Tuileries, an alarmed Louis Napoléon took the unusual step of calling on his brother at his Champs-Élysées pavilion. “You know what brings me here today,” Louis Napoléon began. “There is much talk about you and your financial dealings.” “No doubt the shareholders will enrich themselves,” brother Auguste replied, “but at the same time so will the country,” and of course Louis Napoléon was to share in those riches, as he did in most of the other concessions he granted through decrees and legislation.9
In almost every major rail negotiation Morny proved to be the grand “facilitator” in return for often outrageous compensation, and frequently thanks to his brother ’s cooperation. As the emperor’s brother, Auguste de Morny was clearly the most powerful and influential promoter in the country, attested by his very busy schedule. Then, in the midst of his complicated maneuvers involving the Crédit Mobilier and Grand Central, on June 22, 1854, a messenger brought a letter from the Tuileries.
“Mon cher Morny, I should like to give you another token of my friendship and esteem by naming you President of the Chambers [of the Legislative Body]. Do tell me you will accept.” Morny had reaped in fortunes because of his half brother’s help, and he clearly was in his debt. “Mon cher et bon empereur,” he replied. “Let me tell you how profoundly touched I am by this offer.” Nevertheless he declined a handsome salary and the luxurious Hôtel de Lassay, that went with the position. It was a job for life if he wanted it, but it would also mean losing hours daily from his own highly prosperous personal affairs. Nevertheless Louis Napoléon, renowned by now for his tenacity once he got an idea, in the last week of October that same year invited brother Auguste to dine at the Tuileries. Morny having just returned from a relaxing summer spent at his newly completed château of Nades, on his three-thousand-hectare estate located north of Vichy, Louis Napoléon was counting on finding him much more refreshed and amenable. After dinner that evening he again turned to the Corps Legislatif. “Well now, the matter of the presidency, what is it to be? You know that I have very good reasons in wanting you for this post, and not simply out of friendship.” Even the brother of the emperor could not decline a second time what was in effect an imperial command, and on the twelfth of November Auguste de Morny moved into the palatial Hôtel de Lassay, contiguous to the National Assembly and addressed the Corps Legislatif as its president for the first time.10
In charge of the proceedings of the deputies, Morny would set the day’s agenda and select the legislation they were to vote on—but they were not allowed to debate, nor were they even permitted to address their colleagues in the hemicycle from the podium (which Morny literally had removed). In brief, Auguste de Morny was working hand-in-glove with the emperor, who was de facto responsible for having the legislative proposals drawn up by the Conseil d’État and his ministers. And because of the special relationship with the emperor, Morny had extraordinary influence in getting through some of his own pet projects, invariably motivated by enormous bribes, as in the case of the Grand Central. For instance, his help in obtaining the concession of the small Mulhouse-Besançon railway alone brought him 2.2 million francs.11 Not only could Morny be paid for bringing parties together or for serving on a variety of company boards, he could be influential in arranging for state financing and guaranteed returns for new industrial projects. By the same token, he could draft the necessary legislation favoring his own private projects with interested parties and have these projects pushed through the chamber, all arranged agreeably enough over a champagne dinner in the Hôtel Lassay. The Senate, handpicked and appointed for life by Louis Napoléon, guaranteed swift approval.
Morny being Morny, regardless of the work at the Corps Legislatif, and his many railway, mining, and complex financial commitments, was not a man to overlook “lesser” personal opportunities, such as with his close business associate, the publisher Louis Hachette, in their Papeteries d’Essonnes (Essonnes Paper Company), which provided the paper for Hachette’s burgeoning publishing empire, including books and the newly emerging magazines. The Essonnes company also held the multimillion-franc monopoly in providing the imperial government’s entire paper supply, in addition to selling the paper on which the shares of the Grand Central were printed—that subtle Morny touch again. It amused him. His newspaper, Le Constitutionnel, was also a guaranteed customer. Through a well-rewarded Morny, Hachette gradually obtained the bookshop monopoly of the nations’ railway stations beginning in 1852, while also retaining the monopoly for printing all textbooks for the nation’s schools. In addition, Morny and Hachette made many cross-investments in mining and railways and remained trusted allies to the end of their lives.12
As a financial manipulator, Auguste de Morny was at the peak of his influence in 1855–1856, but for reasons never explained, he began stabbing old faithful friends and investors in the financial-industrial world in the back,13 beginning with the Pereire brothers, Émile and Isaac, who had already enriched him many times over. At issue was the Grand Central, which Morny now wanted all for himself. On April 9, 1856, he announced that he was to join the Grand Central’s network with those of their archrivals, the PLM. Émile Pereire—who, like his brother, was distinguished by his integrity and fidelity in an otherwise ruthless financial world—for one had been as astounded as he was furious at this betrayal. This apparently stemmed from Morny’s earlier attempt, in 1855, to gain a new railway concession independently linking the Grand Central (via Montauban and the Pyrenees) to the Franco-Spanish frontier and Madrid, bypassing Pereire and his own already existing Perpignan–Spanish frontier line. Why share any profit with loyal old friends? Not only that, but Morny had had the effrontery to ask Pereire’s Crédit Mobilier for its financing, Morny apparently anticipating a 22-million-franc ($284 million) “commission” from the Spanish concessionaire, José de Salamanca.14 Indeed, so appalled were the trusting and usually very calm Pereire brothers, and with Morny completely out of control (supported by the emperor, he too now abandoning them after refusing their Paris railway concession in July 1856), that they decided to liquidate the entire Grand Central network while at once stripping Morny of his position as CEO.
Before Émile Pereire could act, however, president of the Grand Central Auguste de Morny sabotaged the whole operation, secretly liquidating his 30,000 shares at top market value reputedly for well over 60 million francs ($774 million). What is not clear, however, is what Morny did with these fabulous sums he reaped throughout the 1850s and 1860s, though his gambling habit (inherited from Grandfather Talleyrand, no doubt) is the only probable explanation. In any event, by the time Pereire and his fellow investors heard about Morny’s treachery, the price of shares had plunged. The Pereire brothers, among others, lost heavily. When the Grand Central officially closed its doors on April 11, 1857, its railways were sold to the Paris-Orléans and Paris-Lyon Lines.15 But their principal shareholders, Bartholony and Talabot, also felt betrayed both by Morny’s secret double-dealing and each other in their attempts (and bribes) to secure those lines for themselves.
By the late spring of 1856, Morny’s name was irrevocably tarnished in the financial world, not to mention within the Jockey Club. For all that, however, he could not be ignored. As the emperor’s brother and president of the Corps Legislatif, he remained lethally influential, capable of controlling both favorable imperial decrees and legislation affecting the Bourse and finance. Dislike and distrust Auguste de Morny as they may, the financiers and industrialists working through the Bourse would continue to be obliged to work with him unless he could somehow be removed from the scene. Murders have been committed for less.
* * *
The Congress of Paris in March 1856, bringing to a close the calamitous Crimean War, seemed the ideal time, if a most unlikely excuse, for Louis Napoléon to do something about this embarrassing half brother, whose latest escapade had left the Paris Bourse stewing in financial turmoil. Their relationship was never clearly defined, and while needing Morny, a cautious, wary Louis Napoléon well realized he had to give him a lot of leeway and tread softly by not inquiring too closely into Morny’s personal affairs. As emperor, he could not afford to alienate him or ask too many questions. But now, given his highly visible role during the settlement of the Crimean War, not to mention his position before a now clamoring Corps Legislatif, as Napoléon III he had to put public distance between himself and Morny. The official coronation ceremony of Tsar Nicholas’s successor, Alexander II, was to take place later in the year, and France was asked to send a delegation on a bridge-building mission after years of war and acrimony. This invitation proved providential, the most opportune moment for removing Auguste de Morny from Paris. An outspoken opponent of the Crimean War in the first place, and a lifelong Russophile, Count de Morny was hastily appointed ambassador to Russia.
It was a scramble, but on July 4, 1856, Ambassador-designate Morny—taking a leave of absence from his post as president of the Corps Legislatif—boarded a train with a special freight car filled with his baggage and the inevitable paintings and antiques he intended to hawk at the Russian imperial court, and set off with his hastily assembled diplomatic staff on his long journey via Berlin and Konigsberg to the Russian capital—leaving the wreckage and acrimony of his financial finagling far behind … which was no doubt a great relief to brother Louis Napoléon.16
* * *
At this time every phase of rail construction was in a veritable frenzy: colossal real estate transactions, iron and steel manufacture to provide the rails and the engines, the great expansion of coal and iron mining made possible by these new railways. Foreign investors, especially the English and Germans, were flocking to the Bourse to take advantage of this fantastic boom, as they were to do later in South America and the United States. Overnight France was awash with a vast new wealth that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and by 1857, the country had 14,200 kilometers of rail, into which investors had poured 2.7 billion francs—the price of a couple of wars. The economy was fueled by a series of new financial institutions. James de Rothschild, in addition to his bank, belatedly caught up with, and successfully surpassed, the Pereires by creating new large-scale investment funds for the development of industry, the railways in particular. The government created the first mortgage banks, both for private property and for farmers. The Crédit Foncier de France was established to finance real estate projects, and the Crédit Industrial et Commercial, the first great bank to accept deposits by private individuals, was used to launch large new enterprises. Louis Napoléon’s government facilitated the legislation required to support this burgeoning new world, further aided by combining and centralizing the ministries of agriculture, commerce, and public works into a powerful super ministry. And then new legislation later in the 1860s would create the first sociétés anonymes, or corporations, resulting in the launching of the nation’s great public banking institutions, including the Banque de Paris, the Crédit Agricole, the Société Generale, and the Crédit Lyonnais, all of which have continued into our own times.17
As for the Crédit Mobilier, it was severely hurt by Morny’s actions in the Grand Central, but that financial institution’s activities were not limited to railways. Real estate and construction also benefitted from its resources, along with those of the Crédit Foncier. The Pereire brothers created an exclusive new quarter of the capital, the Parc Monceau, where splendid mansions were appearing, including one Fanny Le Hon was to move into after selling her residence on the Champs-Élysées. With the city’s extension of the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Hôtel de Ville by the end of 1852, and the razing of dozens of medieval tenements overlooking the Carrousel, the Louvre, and what is today the Place du Théâtre Français, the Pereire brothers built the Grand Hôtel du Louvre for the opening of the Exhibition of 1855. At the same time they were acquiring much more land around what were to become the “grands boulevards” of which the new Opéra would ultimately become its fashionable center. This focused on their follow-up eight-hundred-room Grand Hotel de la Paix, opposite the Place de l’Opéra, with the capital’s first en suite facilities and central heating. A fabulous success, the building boom in this quarter of the city made the Pereires perhaps the greatest real estate tycoons of the day.
Real estate speculation fever was rampant throughout the Second Empire, facilitated by the development of a national railway grid across the country, for example enabling the Pereires to build an entire city resort of seaside villas for the wealthy at Arcachon, outside Bordeaux. Later Auguste de Morny was to do one better, creating the city of Deauville along the English Channel, complete with luxury mansions, restaurants, a casino, and a racecourse named after himself. Louis Napoléon and Eugénie did not share the same delight in this development, however, when the modest fishermen’s huts at Biarritz gave way to another seaside resort, complete with casino, around their previously isolated Villa Eugénie.18
* * *
Morny’s ambassadorial assignment to Russia in 1856 proved a veritable diplomatic triumph, as a result of the very close, surprisingly warm relationship established between him and the new tsar, Alexander II. This unexpected friendship astonished and perplexed many, the English in particular, who were disturbed to find these two recent belligerents, France and Russia, bitter wartime enemies in the Crimea, now almost bosom friends. The Morny–Alexander relationship was, of course, key to this diplomatic breakthrough, though in reality it was the consequence of Morny’s long-term close personal relations with Russian diplomats, including Paul Kisseleff. In addition to hawking many Flemish paintings, Auguste de Morny now met and married a beautiful blond seventeen-year-old princess of the royal family, Sophie Troubetzkouï, by whom he was to have two sons and two daughters. Tsar Alexander, who attended the marriage and gave the bride away at St. Catherine’s Church in Moscow on January 19, 1857, also provided her with a 500,000-franc cash dowry, equivalent to many millions today.19
Although Morny’s diplomatic breakthrough with Russia, at a time of increasing Prussian hostility, was welcomed in Paris, news of his forthcoming marriage and the intention of returning to the French capital, was not. The fact was that Morny’s name was still anathema in Parisian financial circles, and if possible, worse yet for the Tuileries. Nor was Morny himself to escape another storm, one uniquely French, which was about to burst. The heretofore stable, sophisticated fifty-three-year-old Countess Le Hon, for so long Morny’s mistress, on learning of his forthcoming marriage to Sophie, went berserk, frightening everyone, including her son Léopold Le Hon, her brother Alfred Mosselman, their mutual friend, Prosper Mérimée, and Louis Napoléon in particular. “Madame Le Hon was horribly upset and even broke down in public,” Edmond de Goncourt remarked. “All they are talking about now is Monsieur de Morny’s marriage and Madame Le Hon’s furious reaction,” Mérimée reported to Madame de Montijo in mid-February 1857. Fanny responded by sending a threatening two-line note to Morny warning that if he went ahead with the wedding, “I shall publish your letters regarding the Coup d’État [of December 2, 1851] and other documents.” Not content with blackmail, Fanny went to the Tuileries, causing a frightful row, demanding that Louis Napoléon refuse permission for the wedding to take place, and for Morny’s right to return to France. “I made his first fortune!… I took him up as a mere subaltern and today leave him a minister plenipotentiary!”20 she literally screamed over and over again, even in public. On learning of the marriage ceremony, she summoned her lawyers, now demanding the reimbursement of the seven million francs—hundreds of millions of dollars—she claimed to have lent him over the previous two decades. “Many are turning their back on Mme. Le Hon,” Horace de Viel-Castel remarked, “claiming she’s taking Morny for all he is worth just out of sheer spite.” In any case, he predicted, “Morny won’t be coming back from Russia, because his colossal swindle of the Grand Central has left the company in ruins.”21
On Louis Napoléon’s reading of Fanny’s threatening note, which Morny had rushed to him by diplomatic pouch, this potential new scandal—the publication of documents also possibly linking him personally to some of Morny’s dubious financial affairs—was just too much. Across this letter Morny had written: “Must be acted upon very quickly in order to avoid a big scandal!” By return courier to Russia Louis Napoléon sent orders to brother Auguste forbidding both his marriage and his return to France. Moreover, he warned, if Auguste did marry and return to Paris, it would no longer be to the Hôtel de Lassay and his powerful post as president of the Corps Legislatif, with its million-franc perks. On the other hand, if he remained at his ambassadorial post, he would be raised in the peerage from count to be known as the “Duke de Morny.” But Morny had ignored the threat and married in January, anticipating his early return to France, when his brother would, he hoped, have regained his usual composure.
Hell hath no fury like that of a jealous, superceded woman, and with Fanny’s threat to make public Morny’s personal correspondence, and more importantly possible lists of bribes, confidential business contracts, papers, and accounts—some directly involving the emperor—not to mention revelations about Morny’s role (not Louis Napoléon’s) as the real mastermind behind his coup d’état of December 1851, the emperor had to act. Shaken by this thunderbolt, a very real possible threat to his very throne, he immediately summoned Prefect of Police Joseph Piétri, who dispatched Inspector Griscelli to Fanny’s mansion in the Champs-Élysées to seize all those potentially incriminating papers. A very uncomfortable Léopold witnessed the whole thing as a furious Fanny screamed—“I am going to tell the whole of Europe about your government’s police-state tactics!”And as if the shaken emperor did not have enough on his plate, he was handed the latest grim monthly casualty figures from the battlefields in Algeria, even as ships arrived at Toulon with the French army’s wounded and dead.
In the meantime, taking the spiteful Countess Le Hon at her word, Louis Napoléon took steps to ensure her silence by appointing a “neutral” commission to study the Morny-Le Hon business accounts, in order to establish a fair amount for the reimbursement claimed by her. Unfortunately, he named to head this commission his minister of agriculture, commerce, and public works, the fifty-one-year-old Eugène Rouher. This gentleman had not only been Morny’s protégé and fellow deputy from Auvergne for many years, and a shareholder in some of his enterprises, including Morny’s Bourdon Sugar Refinery, he also happened to be Fanny’s current lover. Rouher as a lawyer, ignoring the double conflict of interests, nevertheless undertook this assignment, awarding Fanny Le Hon three million francs. Receiving only half the amount demanded, more hysterics ensued as Fanny closed her much used bedroom door to the good Eugène Rouher.
Morny, for his part, was furious on learning that his trusted friend and business associate Rouher had not only fiddled in his private affairs but had dared to render judgment against him. He had been betrayed by all of them—Rouher, Fanny, and Louis Napoléon. Outrageously claiming lack of liquidity, Morny refused to pay the three million. By now desperate to extinguish this conflagration, Louis Napoléon personally intervened decisively, paying Fanny that sum out of his own purse, while handing Auguste a contract for a short-term, interest-bearing loan for that amount. Parisians, and the many opponents and enemies of the three parties, were enjoying yet another tawdry spectacle à la française. After the very good year of financial profits and the most successful royal visit of Queen Victoria to Paris in 1855, the ensuing years 1856–1857 were proving to be veritable nightmares for Napoléon III.22
* * *
Completely oblivious to his brother’s threats, orders, and current discomfort resulting from the financial scandals and the Fanny Le Hon Affair raging in Paris, Auguste de Morny chose this moment to return to France with his golden bride. Immediately on his arrival on July 2, 1857, he confronted Louis Napoléon who, with Eugénie, was taking the waters at their favorite spa in the Vosges Mountains, Plombières. They met in the garden while Eugénie watched from a safe distance, hearing for the first and only time very loud, angry words by both brothers. The next day, an unperturbed Morny returned to Paris, installing his lovely Russian princess in the Hôtel de Lassay, and resumed business as usual. Nothing daunted Auguste de Morny. He remained president of the Corps Legislatif until the day of his premature death seven years later. The fact is that Louis Napoléon not only needed him, but could not survive without his wayward half brother.