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Show PROPHETIC. Washington Irving, shortly after the marriage of Louis Napoleon and Eugenie Eu-genie Montijo in 1S53, wrote these prophetic pro-phetic words to his niece from Sunny-side: Sunny-side: v ' - t "Louis Napoleon and Eugenie Montijo, Mon-tijo, Emperor and Empress of the French, one, pf whom I have had a guest at my . cottage on the Hudson, the other, whom, when a child, L,have had on my' knee at Grenada. It seems to cap the climax of the strange dramas of which Paris has been the theatre ' during my lifetime. I have repeatedly thought 'that each coup d'etat would be the last that would occur in my time, but each has been succeeded by another an-other equally striking. The last I saw of. Eugenie Montijo she was one of the reigning belles at Madrid, and she and 'her giddy circle of friends had swept away my charming young friend into their career of fashionable dissipation. Now Eugenic is upen a throne, and a recluse in a convent of one of the most rigorous orders. "Poor perhaps, however, her fa'te may be ultimately the happier of the two. The storm with her 'is o'er and she is at rest,' but the other is launched from a returnless shore and upon a dangerous seat, infamous for its tremendous tre-mendous shipwrecks. Am I to live to see the catastrophe of her career, and the end of this suddenly conjured up empire, which seems to be of such stuff as dreams are made of? I consider it as liable to extravagant vicissitudes as one of Dumas' novels." |