Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1880-01-16
NapOleOn's Marriages.

NapOleOn's Marriages.
The marriages of the Bonapartes play
an important part in the story of their
fortunes, and none of them were so sig.
nifcant or 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 we're good for him to impose up
on others, it must have appeared that
his two wives we're admirably planned
for his use. Josephine de Beauharnais
was an ideal wife for young and rising
man of genius. She had everything
which would appeal to fancy like his,
at once selfish and passionate. She had
beauty, rank, the power of pleasing,
and a certain indolent grace that prom
ised an obedience reasonably free fro m
jealousy. Up to the time that he
mounted the imperial throne AID 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 imagination still wider per-
spectives of dominion, he looked for
another style of wife, and found
her in Maria Louisa of Austria.
Her blonde beauty formed of pink and
white color and roundly curvlng lines
and the golden floss of q chila'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, unintellectual
beauty (somebody has called it the Al
deruey style Of prettinesS in his home,
if such word may be used OF the Tuil-
cries. Besides, he doubtless felt that
en- emperor should have an emperOr's
daughter to wife, and this was a young
girl who had hundred monarchs for
her ancestors, and yet she would be gen.
tie and obedient, and not argue with
him or answer him, and would give him
heirs. lie was genuinely attached to
her, and if he knew nothing about her,
and had no premonition of Count Neip-
perg, it Yves all the better for him. She
also was quite taken by storm with
him, and for while the novelty Of
being loved by an ogre-for such she
had always considered him-was agree
able to her. But his tumultuous glory
was quite too much for the daily food
of such small human being as the
Empress, and she was doubtless relieved
when the indignant soul left his body
at Longwood, aud she was free to follow
her ignoble little heart and marry Neip.
perg.
Josephine would have her re-
venge If she could have forseen 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. 1t is her statue that
rises in marble in the public places of
Paris. 1t is her name aud those of her
children that mark the great avenues of
the metropolis-Avenue Josephine, La
Refine Hortense. Boulevard dc Prince
Eugene. Though she was ousted re-
remorselessly from q throne to make
room for Maria Louisa, it was her chill
dren-the children of the creole pro.
script who should become the tenants
of palaces, aud not those Of her rival.
The Duke of Reichstadt was to pass q
youth OF inglorious pleasure, and was
to die before his prime, and leave no
son to inherit his claims to empire;
while the Beauharnais line was to
stretch out like the swarm OF kings seen
by the Thane of Cawdor in his vision.
Eugene, her heroic son, after the fall
of the Napoleons, returned to the Court
of his father-in-law, the King OF Ba-
varia, and became Prince of Eiohstadt,
Duke of Leuchtenberg, and first noble
man of the kingdom. His daughter,
united to the son of Bernadotte, be-
came Queen of Sweden; another became
q princess of Hohenzollern, and third
Empress of Brazil. His oldest son won
the hand of the Queen of Portugal,
and younger married daughter Of
the Czar Nicholas of Russia. And
whatever doubt might be thrown on
the purity of the Napoleonic descent
by which Napoleon Ill. claimed the
throne, he was unq uestionably the son
of Hortense, and was Beauharnais and
Tascher. la-Psgerie beyond challenge.
The grandson of Josephine, Louis Ma
poleon, ruled France in peace and with
sort of splendor for the space of
twenty-five years, while the period of
the first Napoleon's reign, counting
Consulate and Empire together, was
but ffteep-though SO powerful was
the personal imprint made by the uncle,
and so vague was the individual char
acter Of the nephew, that the shorter
reign seems like an age, and the longer
like an episode.--Harper's Magazine.
They have q powerful mill in Holgate,
Massachusetts, that takes in poplar logs
at one end and turns out paper at the
other. 1t eats and grinds to pulp seven