The Newtown bee. (Newtown, Conn.) 1877-current, 1879-12-17

Nap0leen's Marriages.
The marriages of the Bonapartes play
an important part in the story of their
fortunes, and none of them were so
significant and important as those of the
emperor. To one who, like him, looked
upon the world as made for him, and
upon laws merely as something which
were good for him to impose upon
others. it must have appeared that his
two wives were admirably planned for
his use. Josephine de Beauharnais was
an idle wife for young and rising man
of genius. She had everything which
would appeal to fancy like his, at ouce
elfish and passionate. She had beauty.
rank, the power of pleasing, and GER
tain indolent grace that promised an
obedience reasonably Tree from jealousy.
Up to the time that he mounted the i'm
perial throne and seated her by his side.
she was all that his narrow heart and
boundless ambition could desire. But
after the marvellous victory of Wagram
had opened up to his fevered imagina-
tion still wider perspectives of dominion,
he looked for another style of wife, and
found her in Marie Louise of Austria.
Her blonde beauty, formed of pink and
white color and roundly curving lines.
and the golden floss of a child's hair.
appealed strongly to his jaded taste.
He was not old, but, as he said to the
directory. one ages fast upon the field
of BATTLE" and he wanted some such
solace as this soft, intellectual beauty
(somebody has called it the Alderney
style of prettiness) in his home, if such
a word may be used of the Tuilleries.
| Besides, he doubtless felt that an emperor
should have an emperor's daughter to
wife, and this was young girl who had
a hundred monarchs for her ancestors,
and yet she would be gentle and obedi-
ent, and not argue with him or an swe
him, and would give him heirs. He
was genuinely attached to her, and if he
knew nothing about her. and had no
premonition of Count Neipperg, it was
| all the better for him. She also was
quite taken by storm with him, and for
a while the novelty of being loved by an
ogre-for such she had always con-
sidered him-was agreeable to her. But
his tumultuous glory was quite too
much for the daily food of such a human
small being as the empress, and she was
doubtless relieved when the indignant
soul left its body at Longwood, and she
was free to follow her ignoble little
heart and marry Neipperg.
Josephine would have had her re-
venge if she could have foreseer the
course of history for even few years.
1t is she, and not the pretty Austrian.
who will be known forever as the wife
of Napoleon. It is her statue that rises
in marble in the public places in Paris.
1t is her name and those of her children
that mark the great avenues of the
metropolis Avenue Josephine. Ii
Refine Hortense, Boulevard du Prince
Eugene Though she was ousted re
morselessly from throne to make room
for Marie Louise, it was her children
the children of the creole proseript-
who should become the tenants ol
palaces, and not those of her rival.
The Duke of Reichstadt was TO pass s
youth of inglorious pleasure, and was
to die before his prime. and leave no sor
to inherit his claim TO empire, while
the Beauharnais line was to stretch out
ike the swarm of kings seen by the
Thane of Cawdor in his vision Eu'
gene. her heroic son. after the fall of tht
Napoleons, returned to the court of hi:
father-in-law, the King of Bavaria, and
became Prince of Eichstadt, Duke o.
Leuchtenberg, and first nobleman of ths
kingdom. His daughter, united to the
son of Bernadotte, became Queen oi
Sweden; another became 8 princess O.
Hohehzollern, and third Empress o.
Brazil. His oldest SON won the hand oi
the Queen of Portugal, and the youngest
married daughter of the Gar Nichols:
of Russia. And whatever doubt might
be thrown on the purity of the Napo,
leonic descent by which the Emperol
Napoleon III. claimed the throne, ht
was unquestionably the son of Hortense
and was Beauharnais and Tescher-ie
Pageri beyond challenge. The grand
son of Josephine, Louis Napoleon, ruled
France in peace and with a sort o
splendor for the space of twenty-five
years, while the period of the first Ma
poleon's reign, counting consulate and
empire together, was but fifteen
though SO powerful was the persona
imprint made by the uncle, and 81
vague was the individual character o
the nephew, that the shorter reign seems
like an age. and the longer like al
episode. .-H.rper'S Magazine