Kingsbury County independent. (DeSmet, Kingsbury County, S.D.) 1894-1929, 1911-03-31
Empress Eugene, Whose Tragic
Life Spans IS Years, Still
Can Smile.
From the New York World.

From the New York World.
A little old woman all in black, even to
the great spectacles behind her crepe veil,
alighted from the train at Mentone a few
weeks ago. She had one woman compan-
ion, but there was not a soul to meet her
save only the coachman and footman Of
a simple carriage. There were many peo-
pie In the railway station, but scarcely
one of them recognized the woman In
black who walked from the train to the
roadway.
Jean Piermany, a newspaper man OF
Nice, recognized her. bowed, and asked
her to pause a moment for a picture. Her
brilliant eyes flashed through the double
shadow of the black lenses and the black
veil and her mouth curled into a smile
as she stood and granted his request.
Then she drove away.
"Who is the old lady" asked an ac-
quaintance of the newspaper man.
The Empress Engenie."
Yes, this aged woman in black, arriving
with only one attendant and driving away
u~nrecognized, urgreeted, unsaluted by the
cosmopolitan crowd at the popular Riviera
resort, was Engenie, who within the mem
DRY of men by no means old was the.
queen of fashion, the ruler of the gayest
! court in Europe, the model of elegance.
She lacks but a few months of being So
years old; her gay court is no more; its
butterflies are dead. Other queens rule
the world of elegance; her garments are
those Of woe, her jewels are teardrops
and she travels about alone, bowed by q
burden of sorrow.
Look at her picture as that Nice news
paper man took it the other day and then
turn to the photographs she posed for in
the COS, in the days when she was queen
of the revels at those mad fetes, those
brilliant orgies at Compiegne.
THE empress is too mischievous in q
domino" used to be said of her in those
gay days. She loved nothing better than
devising fantastic costumes in which to
dazzle the 1900 odd courtiers that focked
from all over Europe to dance at her
masked balls and those of the Princess
Mettermich.
A favorite costume of hers used to be
that of Marie Antoinette. 1t seems as
If there must nave been something pro-
phetic about this prediction. True. Eu-
genie did not lose her lovely head, but she
lost everything else. Perhaps even fate
was kinder to the last queen of France
than 1T has been to the last empress.
II am the past; I am the distant horizon
where exists a mirage, a shadow, a phan-
tom, a living SORROW
So she spoke only a year ago to an Ital-
ian journalist, adding: II live only in my
youth, long past. There is nothing for
me but to wait; my dreary winter is near
ly over"
The past in which Engenie lives is one
of the most romantic that history records.
When she was in Cairo in 1869, opening the
Suez canal, she went disguised to visit an
aged dervish. He saluted her instantly as
empress and said:
AT your birth the state foretold for you
great power and greater sorrow, for your
happiness will be only temporary, but
your sorrow will last forever. You are
doomed to lose your throne, your husband
and your son and to wander alone through
the world like a lost star. These events
will not happen at once, for the blow
would kill you. To you as an empress 1t
will not be permitted to enter the land of
your husband or son except by permission
OF those you despise: You will nave to
seek a home with strangers and the dress
of woe will never leave YOUR form: your
Jewels will be but teardrops. / have said"
No moro ruthlessly accurate prophecy
was ever made. Every terrible word of
II has been fulfilled.
Eugene was not born to the purple.
Her mother was Marie Kirkpatrick,
daughter of an Irish adventurer who had
settled in Spain. Her father was the
Count of Montijo, several times a grandee
of Spain. Born in May, 1926, she was their
tAl 1AlAlN an CAdCoA NlCd 9obllb dAlA
the second, a daughter, was married to
the Duke of Alba and Berwick a descen-
dant of King James H., of England and
Arabella Churchill. Her mother was for
a while a maid Of honor to Queen Isa-
bella, but she caused scandal by her love
affairs with Lord Clarendon and Prosper
Merimee, and the family had to leave the
court of Madrid. The girl received what
education was possible in a life of rowing.
She spent her brief periods at school in
convent in many lands, but 1t was the
worldly and frivolous side Of her charac-
ter that was most cultivated. In Paris
Prosper Merimee, the author Of Carmen
helped to educate her and Stendahl used
TO tell her stories.
introduction to Louis Napoleon.
Engenie grew to womanhood will a rare
beauty and a somewhat madcap charm.
She had more than one love affair, and
about the time OF her sisters marriage
she tried to poison herself for love. 1t
was said, of the Duke of Alba. Among
those who paid their court to her were
the Duke Of Ossuna, the Duke of Sesto,
Prince Jerome Bonaparte n Senior
Rosas. She became known as 'the most
beautiful woman in Europe Louis Ma
poleon, then president OF the French re-
public, who was destined to marry her
himself a few years later, worried over
the attentions his cousin was paying to
Mile. de Montijo, wrote 10 his uncle and
Jerome,s father, ex-King Jerome, warning
him that the girl was not the kind a