A QUEEN’S TRAGEDY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 8, 25 August 1911, Page 6

A QUEEN’S TRAGEDY.

The sorrows of Royalty are proverbial, but. in few instances are they so heavy arid call for so much pity as in the case of Queen Maria Pia of Portugal, who died recently in sorrow and in exile. She had more than her due share of. the* vicissitudes of the House of Braganza. Her husband died when. still a young man. She was not a witness of" the assassination of her son and grandson, but. nothing could have been more awful than her experience when, waiting for the King and Crown Prince, she met but their bullet-riddled bodies brought by some oversight into her presence. A few years before, her brother, King Humbert of Italy, had also perished at the hands of an assassin. Her own life was at least once imperilled by an anarchist. That was shortly after the murder of King Humbert, when at Aix-le-B,ains a fiendish plot upon her life was happily frustrated. Another grandson, King Manuel of Portugal, was deposed, and all the family had to fly from the country. To the superstitious the part that October played in her life would seem significant. She was born on October 16th, 18-17, and the same date sixty-three years later saw her leave Gibraltar to return, an exile, to her native country, Italy. On October 6th, 1862, she was married, and the date of her arrival in Portugal as a bride was the date of her departure forty-eight years later as an exile. It was also in October that her husband, King Luiz 1., died. It is not strange that one who had seen and experienced much trouble and sorrow should have been considerate of the troubles of others. Quean Maria was for forty years known as the “Angel of Charity.” She was at the head of innumerable beneficent societies, and personally superintended the management of them. But she was not content to play this part only. “Many a time,” says a writer on the Court of Portugal, “she would quit the Palace at some early hour, unaccompanied, simply dressed in blhck, and liolle

of her household would dare to ask whither she went, for all knew that it was on some secret errand of mercy. It was no uncommon sight to see her quitting the Cathedral, after morning mass, surrounded by a crowd of poor folk, who knelt as she passed, kissed the hem of her dress, or presented a petition.” In one respect was she more fortunate than many who have worn a crown. Her marriage was one of affection, and was in oveiy respect a happy one.