OCR Text |
Show Empress Eugenie WE wish the papers would cease giving the pictures of Empress Eugenie "as she appears ap-pears today." It is but the final dissolving dissolv-ing view of a tragedy that is almost closed; the rise and fall of the Bonaparte dynasty. It is wonderful won-derful in its lights and shadows, but the shadows so much predominate that the tragedy is the most sombre in history. And all have passed off the stage except Eugenie, and she but lingers by the scenes waiting for the curtain to fall. We suspect sus-pect that every day she in thought lives over all her part in the drama. One of the most beautiful beau-tiful of women, then a wife, then an empress, then a mother, then the dream that filled her soul of re-converting half of Europe to a deeper faith, to go into history as the most devout as well as the most enchanting of empresses. The first blow was when the armies of France were forced to leave Mexico, then the death of Maximillian, then the bringing back to Europe of his crazed empress, then her own throne swept away and she a fugitive, then the death of her husband, altogether unexpected; then the final crushing news of the death, at the hands of savages, sav-ages, of her son, in whom all her heart and soul and hopes were centered. Now, her beauty, like all else, has passed away, and she but waits the final dropping of life's curtain, for "The boast of Heraldy, the pomp of Power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour." |