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Temuka Leader, Issue 1990, 4 January 1890, Page 2

The ex-Empress Eugenie, once the gay and dazzling sovereign lady toward whom the eyes of all Europe were turned, is said to be more than usually inlirm this season, and spends a great portion of her time in silence and meditation, whether she is lodged in her own borne oris visiting ■at the mansion of some friend, When her fits of gloom coma on she is capable of remaining sleeplesp, speechless, without eating, drinking, or noiioittflLnajEnriA flK*vsd-irff!""fis*~~tw*'!» i -«- four hours at a timp. Persuasion and persistent attempts to bring her to a sense of her surroundings only make ber case worse. It is as if she were communing with the phantoms of her dead past, and as if they held her attention to tho exclusion of all other things in the universe. When the fit is over it may be succeeded by one of devotion, such as only Spanish women can go through—devotion which seems to ieaye the very soul prostrate. The remnants of her wardrobe, which sbo was allowed to remove from Paris in 1876 and 1877, produced much of the fortune on which she lives to-day and the money which she expended on the splendid imperial maustoleum. Of furs alone, at the time of the Empire's downfall, she had £24,000 worth deposited with the Crown fur-keeper, and ethers worth aii much mora with intimate'friends.' ■%) has been estimated that the Empress Eugenie possessed at the time of the Empire's greatest grandeur £160,000 worth of furs.