BORN UNDER A TREE

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11661, 27 October 1923, Page 15

BORN UNDER A TREE

EUGENIE'S DESTINY. FEAR OF THUNDER. LONDON. October 15. The former Empress Eugenie attributed the adventurous character of lie* career to the fact that she .was born in exceptional circumstances. The story will shortly be told for the first time in tho “Revue des Deux Hondo!. 1 ' by Comte Primoli. He relates that the lato Empress was horrorstricken during a thunderstorm while on board a yacht in the Mediterranean. “I cannot describe the terror thunder, and liglining cause in me,’’ she said. “I was born during an earthquake. My mother took refuge in a copse of laurel and cypress, and it was under a treo that I came into the world. That was a presage of my destiny.” Slic added that her mother was then living in Granada. Count Primoli says that the Empress had her earliest adventure at the age of 10. when she was at a ljoarding-school at Clifton. Fired with the desire to visit India she and two Indian girl students escaped to the Bristol- docks and boarded a steamer bound for-India. Their absence being discovered the echoolmistress made a search, found the girls, and led them back to school.