THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON THE THIRD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9790, 5 March 1910, Page 4

THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON THE THIRD.

A brief resume of a letcure recently delivered at South Kensington on Queen Hbrtdnse of Holland appears in " The Queen " :-- "" With an entrain and dramatic force " (says the critic) " that carried tho attention of her hearers with unflagging lattracion to the very close, Mdmo La-tour sketched the various eventful episodes marking the career of Hortcuso do Beauharuais, daughter of tho Empress Josephine, wife, of Louis Bonaparte King of Holland, and mother of the Emperor Napoleon ill. Vividly the gifted lecturer passed in review the happy girlhood of Hortense and her subsequent stay at Saint-Ger-main under the care of Mdme- Campan ; to bo. followed too soon by the tragedy of_ her forced marriage with Louis Bonaparte, a marriage resisted tp the last by both, but in the end rendered inevitable by the will of Napoleon and Josephine, and the fateful results of which were destined to overshadow tiie whole of the future lives of both bride and bridegroom. How could it bo otherwise? With no mutual attraction, and she of Creole birth, light hearted, 'radiant with gaiety and charm, beloved by all, and endowed with exceptional natural gifts; he, selfabsorbed, morbid, melancholy and in ill-health, and becoming daily more suspicious and tyrannical in everything connected with his wife. Swiftly in the succeeding years of that troubled period event followed event. The Empire established, Louis Bonaparte not long after was, by the Emperor's fiat, accepted by Holland as King, and Hortense compelled to leave her dearly loved mother and country and to accompany her husband as Queen. Touching and pathetic was the picture drawn at the close of the lecture of the Queen's desolation on the death of her eldest son and her long prostration; splendid and beautiful the courage recorded of her altered life when, after the fall of tho Empire, banished from France, she found at length rest and peace at Trenenberg in the training and education of the tenderly-loved son, to whom she was ever the inspiration of life, and who on the tomb which he erected to her memooy inecribed:—

A la Heine Hort«ns*. son fils Napoleon; ILT.