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Show Poor Eugenie. MR. SERGEANT has issued a volume called "The Last Empress of the French." We have not seen the book, only a review of it, but the story of the woman's life ought to bo familiar to most people of this generation. After Louis Napoleon had seized the throne of France, she went, a countess, wonderfully beautiful, from Spain to Paris, she captivated the emperor, she consented to be his wife. She was the rage of the world and the leader of fashion for a series of years. She was a good woman, but a bigot in her religious beliefs. She was not without ambition." am-bition." It was chiefly through her influence that the unfortunate Maximillian enterprise was precipitated. pre-cipitated. She lived to see the beautiful Carlotta return to Europe a hopeless lunatic- She helped precipitate the fatal war against Prussia, saw herself, then, a fugitive to a foreign land. That was swiftly followed by the death of her husband. hus-band. Then her hopes all centered in her son. He was killed by a wild savage in South Africa and since then she has walked the earth drooping, droop-ing, a pitiful example of how little there is to royalty, how little to beauty, how little at least in this world of vain ambition and false hopes. It is a good story to -read if those who read can read tho moral also. We suspect the only real affection she ever had was for her son, that she had hopes that by and by that son would restore the throne of his country, and she could not see that the fates had ruled that tho days IfHfi 11 of emperovs and empires were drawing to a mill lH close, and that, after all, the only power is in ffiBi; ftH the people. Jiflfr Hl Poor Eugenie! Sho is to be pitied now all wwl'j 11 her hopes have been Gashed to the ground. In j IST H some respects her fate is more pathetic than that i B HH of Queen Carlotta, because her reason was per- j Ink mitted to remain with her, her reason and her Wmm 1 memory, and every day that memory brings up iMi M the ghosts of tho awful , past to haunt her. ; Inl 1 There was a time when all the women in the flflf ! M world envied her; now all the women in the iwrol WK world who are true women, pity her. She was a J ISB1 HLf creature of destiny, her life that began so sunny, ,W fH has been filled with the memory of tragedies, and j JK M now all she can do is to walk her little circle day ' Mm h by day and wait for her translation. S 1 . jH |
