THE NAPOLEONIC FAMILY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 203, 23 February 1877, Page 5

THE NAPOLEONIC FAMILY.

A -weekly journal, speaking of the recent article in tlie ' Golos' on Lord BeaconsSeld, commits itself to the strange ass ?rtioa that the late Emperor Napoleon "by all evidence sxved nothing." At t'lo time of his overthrow various reports were in circulation a3 to the amount of personal property held by the Emperor, and to the circumstantial statements as to its investment Messrs Barino- were instructed to give a public contradiction, the actnd meinin >• of which puzzled most readers. Within the past day or two, however, still further light has been thrown upo.i the resource of t!i3 exiled Imperial family, and the means it possesses of keapin'up its social dignity as well as the often necessary political agitation. I he document, which purports to give only the real estate avowedly held in France by or in trust for the ex-Empress and her son, is stated to be an offijially-prepired document— ii which, however, only a few copies have been allowed to pass into unofficial hands. The list, as far as regards Paris, comprises three houses or hotels m the Eve de l'Elsyee, one let at a rental of £2,0J0 per annum, and the others, occupied by M. Rouher, are valued by the Credit Foncicr at .£36,000; an hotel in the Rao de Cjuroelles, valued at .£33,000; a house in the Hue d'Alba, valued at .£J6,000, but mortgaged in the Credit Foncier for £14,0 JO; two houses in the Rue Francois ler, valued at £44,000, and mortgaged for ,£K),030; thrjo houses in the Rue Desgenettes, pu-tially destroyed by an explosion, and sold subsequently for .£i,030, on which, however, there is a mortgage of .£14,000, whilst another house in the same strojt has been assigned to the use of General Feray d'lsly. Ta.j total gross value of the Paris property, therefore, may bo reckone 1 at .it least .£213,000 on which there are mortgages to the ex tout of .£43,000 But in the provinces also the late Emperor, with a desire to give an impetus to fashiomble watering places and experiment kl farming, acquired houses anA estates elsewhere in France. To tho former belong his houses at Vichy, Mu-seilles, Biarritz, an I Bayonne, to the latter the lind at Buukhardara (Algiers), an I tlio Solferino property in the Landes, where inuoh profitable result has been obtained from the bold idea of cultivating those wastes ; to these must be adJed the domain of Li Jonchore, not far fro.n Paris — valuable both as a future buiUing speculation anl a present country abode The whole of thes » estates .ire valued at n > less turn £•3.20,000. One only of them, that in the Lkudes, is mort'ved and only for the small sum of J2U.OOJ. In addition tj this avowed property— and it is asserted that the Empress holds un ler numerous prete-noms a large amount of landed anl ho isj p.-op.-rty in different parts of France — the Bonaparte family pjsso^s large estates in Spain, Italy, in Civita Nova, and Rjiii'i, in Bw. bzjr.aaJ, Corsica, and England. A3 for the personal propony, no jiut idea can be arrived at of its amount, some estimifes reaching nearly three millions sterling, an I some falling as low as one miiuo.l. I.i any case, there is enough to prove that the 1 ite E nperor Napoleon, however free-handed he may have shown himsolf m dislnouting money, was not altogether forgetful of the possible force of djs:in/, and took occasion to insure to himself as light a fall a3 possible by providing a beautiful supply of well-stuffed cushions,— Exchange,