THE NAPOLEONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 18 (Supplement)

THE NAPOLEONS.

THE THIRD EMPEROR'S INTRIGUES. BONAPARTE AGAIN FASHIONABLE. j Because of Sedan it has become the j fashion to think Napoleon 111. not ! merely a failure, but a poor kind of man, certainly a very inferior person as com-pared-with his great-uncle,, the lust Emperor. But vulgar opinion is often cruel, and in the case of Louie Napoleon it is 'positively heartless, if we accept I M. d'Auvergne's version in his newlypublished biography, "Napoleon the Third." Enough has been said of his colossal blunder of seeking war with Germany. He paid dearly enough for it. But M. d'Auvergnc tells something new when he says his marriage "with Eugenic was a happy/one. The pair remained lovers longer than most royal couples. Eugenie wae seen kissing the hand with which her husband caressed her. And when the'passion that entered so largely into his love at first had cooled, there remained a genuine liking and friendship A reformed rake, it is said, makes the best husband. Napoleon continued to be a fond and sympathetic husband, but he continued to, be a rake. Eugenie does not seem to* have been greatly surprised or profoundly shocked by the discovery of his infidelities. "If for a moment, when he first met Eugenie, he had harboured some romantic conception of love, it vanished early. He was apt to pick up. a novel and, reading aloud, hold up the love passages to the derision of his courtiers. There was no savour of romance about any of the many amours with which, he has been credited by history or rumour." Napoleon I. is a la Mode. After Waterloo everybody turned against Napoleon. Pamphlets, cartoons, caricatures, the most scurrilous books, all rained on Mβ head in a fihower of repudiation. He was accused of the iriost heinous crimes. ' Not one voice was heard to defend him. It became customary to refer to him as Bonaparte. He was.the man who had strangled the first Republic, who had massacred hundreds of _thousands of Frenchmen in his campaigns. In short, he was a monster. If anyone doubts the rage.of public opinion, he ought to consult the collection of journals and pamphlets on Napoleon's fall at the National Library in Paris. How things have changed in our day! Any writer indulging in. an attack on Napoleon risks finding all the critics on his neck. Napoleon is a la mode. The cultural reviews teem, with, articles on him. Three different movie'versions of the Corsican conqueror are presented simultaneously in Paris. Never since the days of the Second Empire has there been such a crowd and such an avalanche of flowers on the Place' Vendonie than recently on the anniversary of the Emperor's death: The tacit motto seems to be: "No etfil of Napoleon." Only the Napoleon ' of the legend, the heroic Caesar on horseback, "beautiful as Apollo," young, gorgeously dressed, is acceptable. The man with flabby cheeks, heavy paunch and dragging step, which he was already at Waterloo, is forgotten. Napoleon has become a myth. Rousing the populace of Milladorc, Wisconsin, to pursue his wife's kidnappers, when the latter -were non-existent, :onstituted disorderly..-conduct, Roscoe iildebrand, of Minneapolis, learned when 10 was sentenced to 15 days in the :ounty gaol at- Wisconsin Rapids. Hildcjrand announced his wife had been kidlapped by six men and. that her jewels i presumably had been stolen. Poseef? verc formed. ' When Mrs. Hildebrand vas later found with all her jewellery in her person, her husband was arrested )ii a charge of being drunk and die-

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