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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19454, 9 October 1926, Page 2 (Supplement)

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NAPOLEON'S LOVELY SISTER. THE STORY OF HAITI. TOUSSAINT THE IMMORTAL. In a corner of a dark and neglected crypt in Rome, it was stated recently, there lay a half-open coffin. It contained the body of Pauline Bonaparte, princess, sister of the great Napoleon, who died in 1825. One or two privileged people wero looking curiously at all that is left of a very beautiful woman, passing her by and talking so!t!y. The mere mention of Pauline's name sets the clock back over a hundred years, says a London paper. A lovely woman, she danced her way through a terrible epoch and shared in the glory of the chief tyrant of Europe. When this girl from Ajaccio was seventeen she married one of her brother s staff officers—General Leclerc. Witty, beautiful, Paulino flitted in and out of that society, the darling of many, and bore her brother's domineering ways cheerfully enough. What she thought when Napoleon ordered Leclerc out to Haiti is not recorded, but she went with him, and there the shadow of her dancing figure fell across the lives of a little people fighting fearful odds in the cause of liberty. Pauline would have been

simply astounded had someone said that a hundred years after her death she would be almost forgotten, and ihat one of those islanders, a poor negro, would bo numbered among tho immortals. The hero was Toussaint, the African slave who became the liberator of the oppressed people of Haiti,. White was the soul of Toussaint, white with ideas of justice and goodness, white with suffering. He conceived a scheme of constitutional government for his people, who lived under the French flag, and he sent it to Napoleon. The people of Haiti, originally Negroes imported from Africa into slavery, had early in the years, of the French Revolution been granted their liberty, and Toussaint was anxious to make strong the bulwarks of his country's peace. His scheme of government aroused Napoleon's secret fear that there was going to be in Haiti a man stronger than himself. Napoleon's reply was to take away the liberties of Haiti and put the "poor Africans back into a state of slavery. To enforce' this edict and suppress the iinevitable revolt he sent out the pretty Pauline's husband with 35.000 men, There was war, deadly and bitter, there was agony in Haiti, but the General's wife found means of amusing herself. She had the gayest parties, and the officers thought they were fortunate in having a-

inotig them a brilliant and beautiful woman whoso gospel always was " let us dance to-dav, for to-morrow we die." Tho morrow came, and Pauline did not die. Thousands of others did, for yellow fever came to Haiti, and those who had not fallen by the sword were dovoured by pestilence. Napoleon's sister did not mind very much. Toussaint, had been taken prisoner by an act of foulest treachery, sent to Paris, and thrown into a dungeon. Another morrow came, and again Pauline did not die, but her Husband did, with overwhelming suddenness, Paulino took his body home to Paris, bursting in on Napoleon with her story of all that was left of tho expedition to quell Haiti—2s,ooo men dead in battle and from plague, 8000 in hospital; only 2000 left whole, and Haiti still an unconquered land. A year later Pauline was dancing again in Rome. She was then a princess, wife of Camillo Borghese. Four months before her marriage poor Toussaint had died among the rats in tho dungeon Napoleon had flung him. It is very probable that Pauline did not even know that her famous brother had caused tho death of this brave man. She went on her way, creating many scandals, living her life in accordince with her whims and desires, and she was only forty-five when she died.