LOUIS NAPOLEON'S LOVE AFFAIRS.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 224, 5 March 1866, Page 2

LOUIS NAPOLEON'S LOVE AFFAIRS.

It is interesting to follow the course of Louis Napoleon's amours. The first flame of the present Emperor of the French was Eleonore Gordon, the daughterof a French captain who fell in Spain. Eleonore was the Prince's confidante in the Strasburg attempt. She was a singer, and made advances 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 in the Finkinatfc Barracks, the gendarmes were already knocking at the door of Miss Gordon, whom Presigny 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, she 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 affoctionate memory for a long time. , 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 di 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, 1836, Louis Napoleon, in aa official letter, deulinid tie Portu^u fa candidateship in these words :-— " Oou- ! vinced 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 free and hospitable land, the time when the nation will take back to its bosom those persons who were i banished Dy the foreigners in 1815, The I hope of some day being able to iervo Prauce as & soldier and citJM*.

strengthens my mind, and is more in my eyes than all the thrones of 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 daughter. She seemed to have loved Louis JSapoleon sincerely. "When he was transported to America, on board the Andromeda, he thought with sadness of his cousin, and wrote the following in his journal : — " When It was taking Mathilde home a few months ago, we entered the park together, and saw there a tree which had just been destroyed by a tempest — upon which I said to myself that our marriage plans would be destroyed by destiny in a similar manner. "What my mind then 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 borne at Trieste on May 27,1820, was a great beauty, of short stature, but well formed ; with a head of classic shape, large flashing eyes, i 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 assumed . an expression of weariness. When Louis Napoleon became President, Mathilde did the honours in his house. In IS4O, Louis Napoleon was enamoured of the lovely Lady S . He # wore her colours at the tournament which Lord Eiington got up in Ayrshire. Erom the tournament he proceeded to Boulogne. At the fortress at Ham whether he was conveyed after the Boulogne failure, he fell in love with a girl named Badinguet, the daughter of a wholesale baker in the town. By her he had two children, one of them Miss Howard afterwards took charge, of course for a large allowance. Misa^tioward was a robust English beauty, who cost Louis a great deal. He made her Comtesse de Beauregard, and purchased her a splendid villa near Paris. In 1849 she had a fause couche ; and the Parisians still remember, as if it were to-day, how straw was spread in front of the house of the President's mistress. It is notorious that it was Mis Howard who, in the winter of 186 L, 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 Countess Eugenic Montijo, was the happiest of all— she became Empress. In 1848, Louia Napoleon was for a while the admirer of Madame Kaleagis, a charming blondine, to whom Cavignac also paid court. Louis is said to have defeated the General with the lady, who lived apart from her husband. — tfrom Napoleon the Third and his Court, by a Retired Diplomatist.