AN IMPERIAL SCANDAL.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 866, 26 September 1871, Page 2

AN IMPERIAL SCANDAL.

The following editorial from thfl London " Times," on an incident iH the private life of the ex-Emper® Napoleon, elicited a denial from t jH ex-Empress Eugenie that she ever coaß

templatedJlivorce as alleged therein: Toward'tho latter end of November, 180*0, the Empress Eugenie startled the friends and enemies of the Bonaparte dynasty by a private visit to this country.—Although the Emperor, made aware of her resolution at the eleventh hour, so far saved appearances as to he " just in time" to see her off at the Northern Eailway Terminus, and although it was given out that the Empress's journey had no other object than to spend a few days with her former governess in Scotland, still there was something so sudden and clandestine in her departure and in her style of travelling that it could not fail at the time to give rise to every variety of report and conjecture. The members of the French Emhassy in London, whom the telegraph acquainted with the Empress's movements, attended at an early hour to receive their Sovereign's Consort at any of the stations at which she might he expected to arrive. Somehow the august traveller contrived to escape their attentions and drove unrecognized, and accompanied by one gentleman and two ladies of her suite, to da-ridge's Hotel, whence, after a quiet saunter in • Regent-street she proceeded hy rail to Scotland, and was next heard of Edinburgh, at Glasgow, and on the track of summer tourists in the Highlands. After a three weeks' stay, and a private Tisit to the Queen at Windsor she reappeared at theTuilenes. One explanation ascribed the Imperial lady's visit to grief for the death of her lister, the Dnchess of Alva;; another to a passing fit of harmless eecentricty ; another to a .longing-, natural in one born in the purple, to withdraw, for however short a period, from the weary monotony of her lofty station. But none of these seemed sufficient, and the supposition which 'obtained most public favour was that -ihb flight of the Empress 'was the Tesult of some storm in the Imperial household ; and as Eugenie was extremely devout, and at that moment the Emperor had just openly countenanced the Italian invasion of the Marches and Umbria, and was endeavouring to prevail on the Pope to consent to the loss of those provinces, it was surmised that husband and wife had'quarrelled about the Roman question. But there were, besides, shrewder newsmongers, who asserted that jealousy was at the bottom of the Imperial that the Empress had taken umbrage at some indiscretion of her lord the Emperor, and vowed not to go back to him, unless I;he cause of offence was removed.

"Whatever mystery might yet have hung upon that now almost forgotten •episode in a wedded life which has been otherwise singularly fiee from domestic clouds has been unveiied by ithe sentence pronounced by the French Count of Cassation iu favour of M. Devienne, the late first President of the Court of Paris. It seems nowcertam that the Emperor had really[some time before that short breach of his domestic peace succumbed to the fascinations of a young lady whose beauty was the theme of much conversation in the Paris world, and that the displeasure of the Empress was caused by the reports which reached her of the degree of intimacy existing between this lady and the Emperor, and of the consequences the connection had entailed, which could hardly fail to lead to some scandalous exposure. The happiness of the wife and the safety of the hushand required something more than the removal of the rival. It was necessary to obtain from her a retraction of the assertions upon which she founded her claims, and upon the strength of which she threatened to bring the Emperor before a court of law. The Empress, generously giving up all idea of a divorce, and consenting to a reconciliation with her erring husband, exerted herself to •extort from her rival a declaration to the effect that she had deceived ithe Emperor, and that their intercourse had no such results as she had led him to believe.

"We do not think that, out of France at least, people will greatly concern themselves about the part played by the Chief President of the Imperial Court in this delicate transaction. All the interest concentrates itself upon one point, and that is the wholesome fear the Emperor Napoleon entertained as to the consequences of his indiscretion. He was at the time at the height of his popularity, for his Lombard campaign had won him the applause even of his enemies, while the annexation of Savoy and Nice had reconciled him to the advocates of a more strictly national policy. But a lawsuit such as his culpable attachment so nearly involved ham in was more than even in all his might he would have ventured to face. His wife, though placable in the fault, would have been inexorable to its exposure, and peace could hardly have been made unless a means had been found to hush up the scandal. The Emperor's prospects for himself and his dynasty would have lost much of their brightness, and the nation which had condoned the coup d'etat and accepted personal rule would have murmured at domestic irregularities to which general society shows only too much indulgence, but which the high rank of the defendant would not have allowed it to ignore. In our age, when we place kings and princes above us, we expect them to be the best among us; and if they are not what we would have them; we insist, at least, on their seeming to be so.