A LONE EMPRESS.

Taihape Daily Times, 23 July 1919, Page 5

A LONE EMPRESS.

..._._o._.—EUGENIE, WJDOW OG THE THIRD NAPOLEON. 'AeT.he strenge turns of fortune miich the la_st few years have brought _to many’ Crowned heads are no Stranger than the vicissitudes which have been cihwded into the life. of the lonefy ex-Empressof the‘ French, who Is spending the evening of her days quieely in her English‘ home at Fa.rnborough, and who has entered on her ninety-fourth year. Buried in the crypt of the Benedictine Abbey Church, the gift to the Church of this aged lady, who has been a lifelong adherent of the Roman Catholic faith, are the bodies of her husband, Louis Napoleon, an exile who returned to France to be--come an Emperor, and who left it again to die in England; and of her beloved only son, the Prince Imperial, who died fighting for England against the Zulus. 7

The last public appearance of the ex-Empress was at this church, where she took part. in the thanksgiving service at the Armistice for the Allied victory. ‘

Not very long before the ex-Empress spoke for the4firS‘C'time of the sacrifice she had made in refusing Bismal‘k’S offer of the throne or France for her son, in exchange for ceding the two provinces. Alsace and Lorraine went from France, it is fruo; but the Empress Eugenie proved her devotion to the land where she once rigned.

i Sh was not born in th purple. She lwas the granrhlaughter of a descendant of the Scottish Kirkpatricks, who had set up a. wine shop in Malaga_ Her mother had ambitions, and marrierl a Spanish nobleman. who was the father of the lovely girl with regular features and wonderful golden hair; whoso ambitions, for her part, were whotted by a gip.-y‘s pTO_ph(‘cy that her happiness “would bloom with the violets.” From that time on the young Mlle. De Montijo, Wore violets on an occasions. Violets, it will be remem. bereti, are the emblem of the Bonaparte family, and when the beautifvl Spanish girl made the marriage which startled Europe, she wore a train or priceless lace in a design of'”violgts, presented by the town of Liege. ‘