20. Birth of an Empire

0.     Delphine Gay de Girard, Lettres Parisiennes, quoted by Guy Fargettes, Emile et Isaac Pereires, L’Esprit d’Entreprises au XIXeme Siècle (Paris: L’Harattan, 2001), p. 55. She was describing her first rail journey in August 1835 aboard Pereire’s new railway to St.-Germain.

0.     Michel Carmona, Morny, Le Vice-Empereur (Paris: Fayard, 2005), p. 145.

0.     Jean Autin, Les Frères Pereires, Le Bonheur d’Entreprendre (Paris: Perrin, 1984), p. 110.

0.     Carmona, op. cit., p. 146.

0.     President Louis Napoléon signed the decree creating it, Nov. 15, 1851. Also Carmona, op. cit., pp. 231 ff.

0.     Autin, op. cit., pp. 121, 139–141. See also Gille Bertrand for banking background: La Banque en France au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Droz, 1970).

0.     Carmona, op. cit., 138–139; Autin, op. cit., 139–141.

0.     Carmona, op. cit., pp. 234, 236–238.

0.     Carmona, Ibid., p. 234; Claude Dufresne, Morny, L’Homme du Second Empire (Paris: Perrin, 1983), p. 200.

0.   Carmona, op. cit., 260.

0.   Carmona, Ibid., 235. One side gave him 1 million francs, the opposition slipping him another 1.2 million.

0.   Carmona, Ibid., 246–247, 294; Jean-Yves Mollier, Louis Hachette (Paris: Fayard, 1999), pp. 123 ff., regarding educational books, government, pp. 262–263, 294, 299 ff., regarding railway concessions (inspired by W. H. Smith). Morny was also president of the Essonnes Paper Co.

0.   Overconfident individuals often blot their own copybook at the peak of their careers. Morny’s case may also have been caused in part by extreme abdominal pain he was suffering more and more every year, as a result of a medicine called “perles” (pearls) taken for sexual enhancement. It had an arsenic base.

0.   Carmona, op. cit., p. 238; Autin, op. cit., pp. 122, 133, 304, 316.

0.   Carmona, Ibid., pp. 236–239.

0.   Carmona, Ibid., pp. 176–277.

0.   Autin, op. cit., pp. 140–141.

0.   On Pereires’ property investments, see Autin, Ibid., p. 178 ff.; re the properties around the Louvre, etc., Carmona, Haussmann (Paris: Fayard, 2000), pp. 292, 459–460 (Hôtel de la Paix).

0.   Carmona, Morny, p. 316.

0.   Carmona, Ibid., pp. 312–313. After “l’affaire Le Hon” and the Grand Central scandal, Fould thought Morny was finished.

0.   Carmona, Ibid., pp. 312–313, Goncourt Journals for February 1857; Prosper Mérimée, Correspondance Générale (Toulouse: Privat, 1941–1964), vol. VIII, p. 239. Mérimée to Mme. de Montijo, Feb. 1857. Fanny may have been a countess, but she was no lady. Between 1832 and 1856 she gave Morny seven million francs, of which he repaid two million. But this did not include the one million francs he provided as the dowry for their daughter Louise, who married Prince Poniatowski on June 12. 1856, and money he gave Léopold Le Hon—AN Fonds Morny 116 AP2 dossier 9. Jacques Griscelli de Vezzani, Mémoires de Griscelli, dit Le Baron de Rimini, Agent Secret de Napoléon III (1850–1858) (Bruxelles: private printing, 1867), pp. 49–54. Viel-Castel, Mémoires, op. cit., vol. IV, p. 96—dimanche, 5 juillet 1857.

0.   Carmona, op. cit., p. 314. For the continuing Morny–Fanny saga see AN Fonds Morny 116 AP dossier 9. Details of the Griscelli involvement, including Fanny’s note to Morny when in Russia are revealed in Griscelli’s Mémoires, op. cit., pp. 45–46, 52, 53. He claims that Morny paid him 6,000 francs—a year’s salary—for his discretion and silence. In the end Griscelli permitted Léopold Le Hon to carry the box with the documents, personally handing them over to Louis Napoléon, who subsequently ordered the suppression of Griscelli’s book, one copy of which, however, I found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.