The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-05-06
EUGENIE,. EX-EMPRESS.
 OF THE FRENCH. IS 86

and bowed beneath the weight of years, who lives only in memories of a glorious past-such is Eugenie former Empress of France. In a secluded villa in Nice, surrounded only by few faithful servants all but forgotten by a busy world, she who was once the admired and adored queen of the French is passing her eighty-sixth birthday. When France echoed to the tramp of German armies and the thunder of Prussian cannon, the Second Empire crumbled into ruins and Eugenie fled to Eng land, and the splendid and brilliant court of the Tuileries, where she had fashion, became but a memory. Bit ter recollections some of them must be, too, for it was the former Empress who promoted and advocated Maxi milian's disastrous Mexican venture. Sad as has been the fate of Eugenie, it is not comparable to that of the unfortunate Charlotte, widow of Max ilnilian, now a mad woman who, Tn moments of sanity, begs to be per mitted to see her husband.
 The one-time idolized Empress of of Granada, Spain, May 5, 1926. Her father was Spanish nobleman of ancient lineage, the Count de Monti- jo, while her mother was the daugh- ter of a Scotchman who had been a British consul at Malaga. Beautiful, more than ordinarily intelligent and we'll educated, she enchanted Louis Napoleon, ''the man of the people" and he immediately abandoned all projects for royal marriage and an- nounced that he would take to wife "a woman of the people," Pomp and splendor marked the marriage cere- mony in Notre Dame, early in 1853, not long after the coup de'etat that made Louis Napoleon first the Prince and soon the Elm peror of France. Revelry, almost unlimited license and many scandals marked the court, and the Tuileries became a palace of froiic and folly, where the intellectual leaders of France, the poets, artists, novelists and musicians mingled with the nobles and statesmen of the new re- gime. In this gay company the Elm press, although of them and one of them. kept her own name beyond re- proach or hint of scandal.
 Ambitious almost as the first Napo- leon, hungering for even greater pres tige than attached to the social ar- bitter of the world, Eugenie constant ly urged her infatuated husband to cept for Eugenie the Franco-Prussian war might never have been fought, and France still be an empire. But the war was declared, and g. mad dened mob, enraged by the disasters that followed. swarmed about the palace. crying for the blood of the Empress, demanding that her head
 
 be Topped off by the razor of lib- erty' as a penalty for the ruin she had wrought. An American dentist, a Dr. Evans, was instrum ental in ce- curing the escape of the Empress to England. The former Emperor died an exile in 1878, and the only son of the imperial pair was killed by Zulus in South Africa in 1879.
 For years Eugenie set the fashions in feminine dress that were slavishly followed, not only in her own land, but in London and New York, in Mintreal and San Francisco and Medicine Hat. She introduced the crinoline and many other modes that spread over the world. She now has residences in London and Nice, but of late years has spent three months of each year in Paris, frequently visit ing the Tuileries, Versailles and other places connected with her vanished glories.