The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1915-06-05

But he had had illegitimate son in America
ne mad Deen arrested in an evil resort in Paris,
he had been promiscuous in his love affairs he
mad an unattractive personality bad skin boor
eyes, poor carriage. Yet he was attractive to
women who did not think he would be
emperor
He was fascinated by Eugene and made love
to her in an informal easy-going manner But
he tried hard to marry some princess of an es-
tabHshed dynasty. No woman of royal rank
would accept the adventurer. Had anyone sig
nffed her willingness to do so Eugene had never
been empress of the French
1t is said that he at first offered her NOR
ganatic marriage This she refused, and also
refused to him again. Chance drove Napo-
leon into the marriage. His uncle, Jerome, for
mer king Of Westphalia, circulated rumor that
he was incapable of marriage. Bismarck, it is
said, believed the story. To disprove it. Napoleon
asked Eugene de Montijo to share his throne.
They were married January So 1853, at Notre
Dame, Paris, and began a reign of seventeen
years, in which good was intermingled with much
evil.
Their positions were hard at first. Not being
of royal blood, royal families looked askance
upon them They circulated all sorts Of stories
about them. In his marriage proclamation the
emperor said 81 hope that she will revive the
virtues of Josephine" Cynical Paris roared. 1t
remembered the easy virtue of Josephine before
and after her marriage to the great Corsican. A
postcard bearing the picture of the empress had
this sentence upon it,
THE portrait and virtues of the empress-an
for two SOUS
None the less Eugenie's influence was great.
She urged her husband to undertake many en-
terprises that proved dangerous to his empire
but for twenty years France successful in
peace and in war. The court glittered. Every
form of pleasure encouraged. The empress
shone with the supreme radiance of womanly
fascination. Paris the center of interna-
tional society. Whatever Eugene did was done
by the women Of all the world She wore the
ridiculous crinolne and huge fantastic chignon.
The world wore them, too. She had Haussman
remodel and rebuild Paris. The great boule-
wards and avenues of today the work of the
little old who now moves among the
wounded in England
In 1856 heir was born the little Louis
whose end was to be tragic. She dabbled in
politics and offended her husband. She even led
a party which opposed him in the chamber of
deputies. He found out that the love letters
which had charmed him had been written by the
distinguished academician, Prosper Merimee
hired by Eugene to do it. When Eugene had to
write herself her letters were no better than
those of a semiliterate peasant girl Asked about
it Merimee said: God gave her the choice be-
tween beauty and brains and she chose beauty
Eugene loved bohemianism and laxity and
Paris became efemfnate. Handsome faces a
small gift of epigram, romantic past, were the
credentials to the court of the empress. A grad
ual decay honeycombed society and the army and
the foundations OF Sedan were laid
Eugene not popular with princesses who
fOuted her birth with French women who
felt that when Napoleon made up his mind to
marry a of less than royal rank he