The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-06
EX-EMPRESS EUGENE
a LINK BETWEEN THE FRENCH
EMPIRE AND REPUBLIC.
Daughter of Poor Mother-"I'm the
Only One Left" Said the Elk
Empress at the Deathbed
Of the Princess Mathildc.

Paris Special Correspondence of The
Philadelphia Record.
At the death-bed of an ancient lady.
Mathilde, Princess of the Nspoleonic En-
pire. stood another, beautiful in profile
yet, with snow-white hair, and leaning
on a gold-headed ebony cane.
Mathilde at the age of eighty-four. had
passed away; and this other in her 18th
year, let her beautiful dark eyes wander
from one young face to another, in the
midst of all the sympathy and sadness
round her, murmuring:
I'm the only one Left
1t was Eugene, ex-Empress of the
Empire, once the triumphant beautiful
young wife of Napoleon III, who said
this of her ancient enemy and rival,
Mathilde. the cousin of the Emperor.
There never had been any open rupture;
and ever since the Empires fall the in
terests of the party had held them to-
gether. If Eugenie might be called the
heart of the Napoleonic party, Mathilde
was certainly its brain. Row she wac
gone; and the heart mournfully darted
a glance back into the mists of the past.
counting the stabS It had received from
various hands.
Although the Bonapartists themselves
were newcomers, some with ancestry and
some without regularly dating from a
the party and family never forgot that
Eugene was yet newer than them
selves, a poor girl married by Napoleon
1IE-for love. Even recently, during the
last illness of Mathilde, they had thrown
it up to Eugene that she was the grand
daughter of British subject who had
failed in business at CadiZ.
In reality the story is more interesting.
The mother Of the Empress Eugene was
al.o a poor girl without a dot, married
for love by a Spanish Grandee, the
Count de Montijo. Eugenie's mother
was. indeed, the daughter of a British
subject. whose worldly affairs did not ex-
actly prosper at Cadiz; but he had a per-
fectly honorable situation, and that sit
uation--it is generally not known-he held
from the United StatesJof America.
His name was kirkpatrick. and lie was
related to honorable Scotch families like
the Gordons and Munroes For years and
years his occupation in the lovely Span
ish city by the sea was that of American
vice cousul;, that is to say, he did all tho
work, had the confidence of the natives,
whose language he spoke and whose ways
he understood. 1t was in the days when
the clipper trade of American merchants
with Mediterranean ports was great,
when bringing home oranges, raisins.
white grapes, wines, silks, spices, velvets
and even wooden goods the white wings
spread again for Spain. in ballast with
barrels of silver dollars.
Kirkpatrick. the Scotchman, had mar
ried Miss Powers, who had no Spanish
blood either. and who was the daughter
of another British subject inSSpain. also
vaguely connected with a consulate. TO
show how small the world is, it is by this
Powers ancestry that Eugene is some
kind of distant cousin of the De Lesseps
family, of Suez and Panama Canal fame,
and now as completely ecnps2d by the
failure of great projects as the Empire
of Napoleon.
Present-day Parisians. who are incrcd-
IDLY light-minded and inaccurate, not to
say unjust. glibly declare the fall of the
Empire to be due to Eugene. 1 even
heard a lady of some position the wife
of an army officer. declare the other day
that Had Napoleon III married his cous-
in MathiIde instead of that Spanish girl
all would have been different"
What she did not seem to consider is,
that Napoleon III could never have mar
ried Mathilde. Herself born in exile in
Trieste, while her illustrious uncle, this