78 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
all the servants awake and about is most extraordi- 
nary. Lincoln’s being shot in the theatre seems more 
possible. I still think we must be the victims of a 
gigantic street rumor. Here they brought the story 
with the most singular accessories; it is attributed to 
the Booths — the brothers Booth, as they call them, 
and they have got the name of J. Wilkes Booth in full 
on all the bulletins. This part must be a fabrication. 
It is in vain I state that Edwin Booth at least is a 
loyal man — he and Wilkes are in everybody’s mouth 
as rabid secessionists, fanatics, etc. The whole thing 
seems to me like a bad dream and has a theatrical 
aspect which makes it the more strange that the 
Booths should be mixed up in it. 
And now let me freshen up your thoughts and my 
own by an account of what we have been doing. .. . 
On Tuesday evening (May 9) Agassiz and I went to 
the Palace together that I might pay my respects to 
the Empress, which I had not yet done and which 
seemed to be considered the proper thing to do. The 
Emperor had appointed this evening for the visit, 
so we were sure of being received. At the door of the 
Palace were only one or two men in uniform, and we 
were shown through a number of long corridors and 
one or two antechambers where were standing a few 
groups of gentlemen, — chamberlains, Agassiz said, 
gentlemen-in-waiting and the like. It looked to me 
like a dreary kind of business, for there seems to me 
all the etiquette of a court here and but little of its 
gaiety or grandeur. One of these gentlemen showed us 
into a drawing-room where he asked us to take seats. 
