The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1896-05-13

children; but they were by her precedent
lord Eugene Beauharnais was capable,
but he was not Bonaparte The decree of
1907 naming Jerome as successor was not
satisfactory. 1t began TO be said that there
was a state necessity that an heir DC born
TO Napoleon himself The state necessity
was not effectual with her who was nearly
forty-seven! The premises had one conclu-
sion only-diUOrce.
All the world knows the story. The
Empress had both man and nature against
her. AS TO the Corsican, she had lived
with him for nearly fourteen years. She
knew too we'll the futility of resisting
him. 1t would seem that all expcdients
were useless. At length the Emperor's
mind was made up. He broke his purpose
TO Josephine as gently as might be, at
Malmaison The divorce was arranged on
the 18th and 10th of December 1909. The
Bonapartes had now full satisfaction. No
child Of Josephine should ever wear the
diadem of France Napoleon did as much
as he might to alleviate her despair. He
left her Malmaison, her title of Empress,
and pension of two million francs. He
had loved her with fitful and tyrannical
fondncss. He had by no means been faith
full TO her; and many Islander of the en-
vious said that she had been unfaithful to
him.
After the fallen, HhOm2 Would the EN-
peror of the French, son of the mulberry
woman Of Ajaccio choose another-as he
had chosen the firstly nature and ma
lures law. Orwould he calculate? Would
he find in Vendee or Cotes du Nord or
Lorraine some peasant girl, some Pucelle
of Arc, and make hcr-as he had made
G. Inn pial nd hnr IN
see springing his possible lions whclp, so
covcted-and necessary? Or would he
hoping TO pacify the past, choose some
princess ont of the House of his friends
such friends as Gustavus or Alexander or
Frederick William or Francis?
The politician prevailed over the man,
even in Napoleon. The splendors Of dy-
nastic glory oblitcrated the plebcian in
stincts of his nature The eagle of Austen
litz dove into the thickct of the past, and
mated with a Hapsburg Maria Louisa,
child of our well beloved brother the good
and faith keeping Francis, whose subjects
we lately met on the field of Wagram 10,
the blood frozen there is still bright-red In
the iceD is our choice. BY this way we
will confirm our Imperial House; and our
King of Rome shall have a royal mother.
We will love her, by the political rule-of-
three; and she shall love us, by the calcu-
lus of necessity.
There was little delay Maria Louisa
was appalled, at the prospect-at the first.
The woman in such cases Is hard to quench.
But Francis would have an Emperor for a
son-in-law; and the daughter Of Francis
assented With swift preliminaries the
royal cavalcade, on the 18th of March,
1910, swept out of Vienna, bearing her 70
her fate. On the list of April, at the old
palace Of ST. Cloud, shining splendidly for
the occasion, the civil marriage was per
formed. The Pope refused to approve the
divorce of Josephine. Most of the cardi-
mails, declining to bless the marriage were
stripped of their scarlet regalia and ban
ished from Paris.
In the Tsileries, Maria Louisa sought
at first to play the part of Imperatrice
with gaiety and good will. Tradition adds
that Napoleon loved her. Certainly he said
so; and his future conduct in the marital
relation was more exemplary than before.
There were no more Madame Foures,
Countess Grassinis, Madame ***'s, Ste
phanies, Eloenores, Hortenses Walewskas,
or other beautiful Uncertainties on the
horizon. But the vivacity and charm OF
the court of Josephine never returned
She at least had lpliSIlments
The new Empress fulfilled her part with
the apathetic smile of Hapsburg. On the
night of the Goth of March, 1911, the If
tieth gun from the battery announced tc
Paris a-tiptoe that the Imperial programme
had been fulfilled to the letter; the King
of Rome was born Josephine, at Nal
maison, might almost have heard the ar
tillery and shouting Would she have
smiled IL the firing had ceased with the
forty-ninth gunS That would have meant
q daughter!
In May of 1910 it could be said of Ma
poleon that he had had his way. In few
Instances his prodigious dreams had dissi