A ROYAL BETROTHAL

TWO ROMANTIC ALLIANCES RECALLED. The report from London, although yet unconfirmed, that Prince Alexander of Battenburg is to mar it Countess Zia Torby recalls the romantic loves of their parents, Grand Duke Michael Michaelovitch and the- Countess Torby and Prince Henry of Battenberg and Princess Beatrice of England. ° The son of one Emperor and uncle of another were sent into exile and a petty German princeling married, the daughter of Europe's irost powerful sovereign. Curiously enough, a morganatic marriage, •which was the "cause of the Grand Duke Michael's loss of favour, was the foundation of the rise of the Battcnbergs.. And still more interesting, the marriage of Prince Alexander and the Countess Zia, if it takes place, will make the issue of the Graril Duke's morganatic marriage the sister-in-law of the Queen of Spain. Fof" the last" 20 years the accounts of the fashionable folk at the various winter and summer resorts on the Continent, in London during the season and in the Shires at hunting time have included the names of t lie Grand; Duke Michael of Eussia and the Countess Torby. No function was complete without the presence of the,tali, slender, silent, blackbearded man, ar.ci the radiant, beautiful, blonde woman, I'm love.of whom he became an. expatriate. Their villa at Nice was the centre of that semi-royal life that is found along j the Biviera'in January and February. Homburg saw them when the late King Ed-ward made his annual visits. Trouville and Deauville welcomed them after they finished the Paris • seaepn with the Grande Semaine. In the London season they were seen at the opera and attended all the.smart balls and dinners. At their -country house the week-end parties -were- the gayest and most fashionable. ; But they never went to Russia. The meted out to the Grand Duke- Michael by the Czar for defying the head of the iiomanoffs and marrying the beautiful woman he loved; who did not happen to 'be of royal birth, was expatriation. In his case love brought C ' But with tlie father of young Prince Alexander of Battenberg love was more kind, " Prince Henry was of a far more retiring nature than his brother, Princo Louis, the popular sailor, and inclined to studious pursuits. Princess' Beatrice. youngest "daughter of Queen Victoria and her constant companion, fell in love with the blonde voting German. The British public did not relish the proposed alliance, and there were many sneers at the audacity of a German princeling aspiring to the hand of an English royal princess. Even the Government of that dav did noi/regard the marriage favourablv, but Queen Victoria had her way and overcame all opposition, to make her daughter happy. "• „;.;.'. . The Prince* of Battenberg »Uso .owed their title to a morganatic marriage: .Xne original Counts of Battenberg were a, German famiiv, whose seat was the Castle of Kellerburg, near the town ot Battenberg, in the now Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. The title Count of Battenberg became extinct in l? 1^ Alexander, a younger son of Louis li., Grand Duko of Hesse,.fell madly in love with a Polish beauty, the Countess Julia Theresa von ■ Hanke, whom he married morganatieally in 1851: The bride was created Countess of Battenberg by the Grand Duke, who in 1858 raised .her rank to that of Princess, and gave to her and her children the right to stylo themselves Princes and Princesses of Battenberg, with the prohx of Serene Highness. , . ~ . , pYince Henrv Maurice, their third son, left three the eldest of whom is. Prince Alexander. His one daughter, Victoria Eugenic, named for her grandmother and the Empress Eugenic, is now the Queen of Spain.