EUGENIE

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 September 1917, Page 6

EUGENIE

A LINK WITH 1M PERT AIT FRANCE A lid wav be! ween Sandhurst Aldershot lies Farnborongh House, where the widow of Napoleon TIL. a venerable ladv of ninety-one, serves as matron in her own home, now a hospital for Britain's wounded in the lieht to save France from another 10/i. Boohing out toward the baltle.-line smd waiting for the coining of her revanche, she lives on, it would seem, only because she cannot (dose her tear-dimmed eyes until France has regained jvhat an empress’s frivolity jeopardised and an emperor's weakness lost. That France was a partner to that weakness and frivolity, and must share in (he blame for it. France knows and so does Eugenie. Perhaps it is the reason why the Third Republic and the fallen empress have remained on such good terms. • The figure of that bent old lady, in unchanging mourning, who used to spend a few days in Paris twice each year on her way to her villa near .Mentone on the Riviera, is familiar to most, Parisians. Be it recorded to the credit of even the reddest Anarchist s courtesy that there has never been a ]• vouch man who did not bare his head betoro her personification of gentle dignity among the RUINS OF AMBITION, LOVE AND LIFE. Not all the passers-by along the Luo do Hivoli knew that the withered taco with the long nose and the b.ack, burning eves under a crown ot white hair, peering by the hour from a window of the Hotel Continental at the palace and the wardens of the Tutleries, was ilm woman who had shared the throne ot France. Eugenie always had that same apartment at the Continental, whose windows framed a picture ol the spot where she had reigned, queen ot beauty, fashion, and esprit, and ruled as regent while Napoleon looked on at Solferino and .Magenta, and again when he went to his doom at Sedan. The wing of the Ttiileries that contained her private apartments was razed In the mob during the Commune. It linked the western tower by the Seine to that wing along the line de It,ivoli, where ministerial desks .and file-cases have since found a home, and its destruction has opened up one o the finest vistas of any city, from the old Louvre across to the Arc de Inomphe. HOSPiTA LAT FAR NBORDUG If, Out of what Ki.‘genic saved of lies fortune and increased by lucky mvestments she is now spending m large sums to help the war's wounded. A number of them are housed at I'urnborough, and are cheered on the romt to recovery by the daily visits of the sympathetic Empress—"her majesty as she hits never ceased to be called, even in republican Trance. One of her expenditures, made -some years before Ihe war, is worth recalling When the home of the first French empress, Josephine’s Malmaison, near Paris, was sold at public auction, Eugenie bought it and presented it to the French nation to serve as a museum for the more Intimate relics of Napoleon I. and Josephine. She reserved as her own private property the alley of poplars, a favourite walk of the little Corsican whose dynasty site had hoped to carry on through her ill-starred son. At the end of the alley there is a spot where site planned to build a mausoleum to s!u Iter flic remains of her husband and son, should Trance ever allow them to bo brought from their bnrying-place in England.