LOUIS NAPOLEON'S LOVE AFFAIRS.

Evening Post, Issue 259, 6 December 1865, Page 2

LOUIS NAPOLEON'S LOVE AFFAIRS.

It is interesting to follow the course of Louis Nap jleon's amours, ff he fresh flame ' of the present Emperor of the French, was Eleonore Gordon, the daughter of a French captain who fell in Spain. Eleonore was the Prince's confidante in the btratsburgh attempt. She was a singer, and made ad- . vauces to the Pretender at ''Baden in the summer of 1836. It is said she had dreamed that she would become Empress of the French. In any case she behaved very courageously.. While Louis Napoleon .was unsuccessfully haranguing the troops tin the Finkmatt Barracks, the gendarmes were already knocking at the door of Miss Gordon, whom Persigny had just informed that the Prince's enterprise was a failure. *. Miss Gordon burnt all the papers referring to the emeute — the lists of conspirators, the correspondence 'with them; and when the gendarmes threatened to break the door in, site placed a chest of drawers against it, so as to complete her auto-da-fe at leisure. It was owing to her. presence of mind, consequently, that so little came to light at the trial. Louis Napoleon held Miss Gordon in affectionate memory for a long linig^J When Louis Blanc visited him at Ham, in 1845, he spoke kindly about -her. Almost simultaneously, Louis Napoleon had fixed his eyes on the Queen of Portugal, who was ' then fifteen years of age. The portrait of Maria da Gloria produced an impression on him,. and he would not have been indisposed to become King of Portugal. ; But the matter did not go on quite right,, in spite of all, the exertions made by his relatives. On December 14, 1835, Louis Napole >n, in -an official letter, declined the Portuguese candidateship .in - these words: — " Convinced that the great name I bear will not always be a cause of exclusion from my fellow-citizens, because " it reminds them of fifteen glorious years > I calmly await, in a freu and- hospitable land, the time when the nation will take back to its bosom those persons who were banished by the foreigners in 1815. The hope of some day being able to serve France as a soldier and citizen strengthens my mind, and is more in my eyes than all the thrones in the world." At that time, however, a third lady .was the rival of the singer and the Queen. This was Mathilde, King Jerome's seventeen-year-old-daujjuter. She seemed to have .loved Louis Napoleon sincerely. Wiieu he was transported to America, on board the Andromeda, he thought with sadness of his cousin, and wrote the following in his journal : — " When I was taking Mathilde home a few months ago, we /entered the park together, aud saw there a tree which had just been dejtroyed by a tempest— upon which 1 said to myself that our marriage bans would be destroyed by destiny in a similar manner. What my mind theo darkly foreboded has since become the truth. Have I during this year enjoyed the whole amount of felicity granted to me in this world ?" Mathilde, who was born at Trieste on 27th May, 1820, wa9 a great beauty, of short stature, hut well formed ; -with a head of classic shape, large flashing eyes, and expressive, regular

features. Her blooming complexion served as a relief to her light flaxen hair. Soon after her marriage with Prince Anatole Demidoff, her charms faded away, and her face flssumed an expression of wearinessWhen Louis Napoleon became President, Mathilde did the honours in hia house. Tn 1840, Louis Napoleon was enamoured of the lovely Lady S . He wore her colours at the tournament which Lord Eglinton got- up in Ayrshire. From the tournament he proceeded to Bou'.ogue At the fortress at Ham, whither he wts conveyed after the Boulogne failure, he fell in love with a girl of the name of Badinguet, the daughter of a wholesale baker in the town. By her he had two children, of whom Miss Howard afterwards took charge, of course for a large allowance. Miss Howard was a robust English beauty, who cost Louis a great deal. He made her Comtesse de Beauregnrd, and purchased her a.spleudid villa near Paris. In 1849 she had a fause couche ; and the Parisians still remember, as if it were today, how straw was spread in front oi the house of the President's mistress. It is notorious that ir was Howard who, in the wirfter of 1861, drove the Empress to Scotland by her audacity ; she took a box in the opera immediately opposite Eugenie's and stared at her through her glasses in a most provocative way. The last of Napoleon's loves, the Counteßs Eugenic Montijo, was the happiest of all— she became Empress. In 1848, Louis Napoleon was for a while the admirer of Madame Kalergis, a charming blondine, to whom Cavignac also paid court. Louia is said to have defeated {he General with the lady, who lived apart from her* liusband. — From "Napoleon the Third and his Court," by a Retired Diplomatist.

King, the murderer of Lieutenant Clutterbuck, haa been executed at Tullamore. It appears that one of the convicts in the gao! was the executioneer, and this fellow so bungled hia dreadful taak that the noose slipped behind the neck and the murderer died in all the agonies of slow suffocation. However necessary it may be to exercise a judicious economy in the matter of the county estimates, it is .still more essential that the utmost penalty of the law should be carried out as mercifully as possible. In answer tp an inquiry in the Daily News when the authorised Commentary on the Bible, suggested by the Speaker of the House of Commons, will be ready, Mr. John Murray writes to say that the scheme, so far from being abandoned, is making steady progres*, so'fe portion of the work being already in type. Mr M*urray adds, " The scholars end divines engaged upon it have felt (hat a speedy publication was quite subordinate to the proper and thorough execution of so momentmi* a design."