BY THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 894, 13 August 1910, Page 5

BY THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

I OLD MEMORIES REVIVED. . EX-EMPRESS EUGENIE REVISITS COMPIEGNE, HER.PALACE A MUSEUM. By Teleeraph—Press Association-Copyright. : Paris, August 11. Among tho visitors to France this summer, is. tho ex-Empress. .Eugenie, widow of Napoleon 111, who has been living in England since tho downfall ,of the Second Empire forty years ago. ■ The ex-Empress, who is now. eightyfour years of age and has long out lived the splendours 'and profusion of the Court of which she was the central ligure, revisited the one-time Royal Chateau of Compiegne, now a .public museum. Mixing among the . the frail old lady wandered through the halls of the palace, the scene of her courtship, with the Emperor, and for many years the resort of her Court during the revelry of the hunting season. .•'"'■ . " ,'. On inspecting,.'the pictures in the rooms, occupied, by her" only son, the Prince Imperial, during his youth, the ex-Empress was- overwhelmed with memories of the past, and deeply affected. - ■ „ ■'■_■.. , A ROYAL ROMANCE, , ■ The ex-Empress ■ Eugenie ■ has lived at Farnborough, Hampshire, since the:death of. Napoleon 111., She.iis extremely active, considering her age, and'last summer, for instance, visited points so widely separated as'the Riviera, Madrid; Versailles, Dublin, and finally was at the Cowes regatta in her yacht the Thistle/ ..' Tie ex-Empress, is. the daughter of the Count of Monti jo, of Spain, who had married Miss Kirkpatrick,- daughter of the United Stales Consul at 11-alaga. Her youth was-spent in. Paris, and at the. balls given at Elysee .she made the acquaintance of Louis Napoleon, then Prince President. In November, 1552, mother and. daughter were .Invited to lfouhtutnblcau, and in ync picturesque hunting parties tie beautiful young Spaniard, who showed herself an expert horsewoman, was greatly admired by all present,' and by her host in particular. Three weeks later the Empire was proclaimed, and during a series of fetes at Compiofrne the Emperor became more and more tascinated. On New Yoar's Evo at a ball at the Tuileries, ijdlle.de Montijo, who had necessarily excited much jealousy and hostility in the female world, had reason to complain that she had been , insulted by tho wife of an official 'personage. On hearing of it, the Emperor said: "I.will revenge you," and within three days he had made a formal proposal of marriage. The. marriage, which some peoplo considered was a mesalliance,' '»as celebrated with great pomp at ftotre Damn. On the fall of the Empire, seventeen years later,' she settled vriln the Emperor aim ner sun at Chislehußst, . England.. The . Prince .Imperial was killed;in the Zulu.War at the age of twenty-three, and in the : following year the ex-Empress visited the spot and brought Uack the body. . ■