Louisiana capitolian. (Baton Rouge, La.) 1879-1881, 1879-04-19
MADAME B0NAPARTE.
The Last Link in the Chain Between the
Past and the Present.

The last link that united this genera
ton to the great events OF the NAPOLEON
ic era was broken recently in the death
of Madame Patterson BoDapartc. She
married the younger brother of the great
Napoleon in 1903, before Napoleon had
risen to the zenith of greatness Her
friends were of that era, and one by one
they had dropped away, the great, the
gifted, the famous, the beautiful, and
left her in tho cold isolation of % genera
ton which, busy with it's own life, has
ceased to think of the past. Her match
less beauty, her clear intelligence and
sparkling wit, her dauntlcss and uhtan-
able courage, her stainless reputation in
the age of European immortality, made
her n distinguished parsonage among
the distinguished. Wellington aud Tai
lcyrand praised her beauty. Madame
dc Stacl cnvicd il; Madame Recimicr
nattered it, She was the friend oil La
fayetto and Thomas Jefferson and adorn-
ed the most brilliant society with her
wit, social distinction and personal
charlns--the society of thrce-qunrters
of century ago. Hardly should one
desire to live to see all the assoCia lions
of youth reccde into the remote past.
To outlive youth, beauty, friends, social
customs and manners, the physical yigor
and joy in motion-to lose all these and
become only the object OF tender pity
and care, this is sad indeed. Dying now
she is thought of, not as the brilliant
beauty who charmed all who came in
contact with her, but as tho aged wO-
man weared and cmbittorcd by u long
contest with injustice and wrong, and
dissatisfied with the obscurity to which
the ambition of Napoleon had consigned
her. If it were good fortune for men
to fall in love in the moment of victory
like Nelson, Wolfe Stonewall Jackson,
and o misfortune for them to outlive
their greatness like Marlborough, 80 it
may be with eminent historic beauty
and grace. 1t will not be until the next
generation, until she has also passed into
history and has taken her place among
the eminent persons and stirring cvont'
of thrcc-quarters of century ago, that
she will be thought of as the fascinating
lady whose beauty charmed all who
looked upon it. Napoleon, who III hi
ambition for his brother to marry 9
Princess, separated him from his yonng
American bride and condemned her tC
bauisl,mont from the brilliant European
society which she was fitted to adorn
and to Which her ambition invited her
came afterward himself to feel what
Punishment, thwartcd ambition and $50
lation might be. There is something o
parallelism between Napoleon on TIN
lonely island off st. Helena and thi
victim of his despotic injustice alone o
all her generation in this last quarter o
the nineteenth century.
The messy marbles rest
On the lips that she had pressed
In their bloom,
And the names she loved to hear
Had been carved for many year
On tho tomb.
But with her death will come renew
nj of her youth. Forgotten soon will lb
the bent form, the faltering step, tn
withercd hands, the cynical and cmtit
tered temper. She will be placid annie
the groups of her youth. We will thinl
of her, not worn and dccrepit, but crcV
1.-the, elastic, the exquisite woman
seventy years ago, as she tripped IT,
streets of Baltimore in its village days
before the nineteenth century ha
dawned, or delighting the drawing
rooms of that period with her wit AMI
gaioty, or chatting with Talleyrand o
Lafayette in the courtly halls Of Europe
, She belongs to history, and takes nd
place among those women whose beaut
and destiny made part of the histoI'
{ of their era.