The Warwickshire Herald. — 1887-01-20 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

ROMANTIC STORY. FOR the purpose of ascertaining whether there was any truth in the extraordinary story. a representative of The Globe visited M Dumont, at his rooms, 109. Regent-street, The political sympathies of M. Dumont were easily to be ascertained from the numerous portraits of the Third Emperor and the ill-fated Prince, which adorned the walls. Upon the mantelpiece, again there were cabinet photographs of Prince Louis. and, as a centrepiece, a small replica of Boehm's statue of the Prince, leaning faint and bleeding against a rock, as he succumbed to the murderous assegais of the attacking Zulus. Upon a side table also, there is displayed a revolver, which belonged to his Highness, and M. Dumont referred with pride to the fact that he possessed many other relics of the dead Prince. M. Dumont had seen the story which hail been reproduced from the Figaro. An obliging friend had sent hin: the newspaper cutting, with a view of calling attention to a suggestion contained within it. which M. Dumont, at the outset, indignantly repudiated. The writer of that version had, H. Dumont maintained, insinuated that he had acted as a " go-betvveA]," to use no stronger terms, in the relations of the Prince with some young woman. "He never bad any intimacy with any. young woman," said M. Dumont decisively; "the Count de Clary, who was like a father to him, never left him an inch. Had the Count de Clary lived, he (the Prince) would never have gone to Zululand." and M. Dumont then intimated that he could "a tale unfold" with regard to the real reason which had induced the Prince Imperial to set out on his disastrous expedition. It Was not a fact. be said, that the prince "lodged at his house." He was a customer, and came to dress there whenever he was in London. To secure him greater privacy a room which had been furnished as a private dress ing room for another member of M. Dumont's aria tocratic clientele was set apart for him. M. Dumont never heard from the Count de Clary, or from the l'rince, anything about a young Englishwoman whom he had "met in the train," but there was at times considerable jocularity among the Prince and his intimates about a very " old " Englishwoman who would insist on attending the different railway stations at the bime of his departure or arrival. Her reason for this curious conduct was that the Prince resembled her dead son, and that she felt "as a mother to him • " "but I think the poor woman was mad," added M. Dumont. The Prince had never received his friends in the room which had been thus set apart for him, and used it merely in the ordinary way as a dressing-room. After the departure of the Prince for the Cape the mythical young woman is said by the Figaro" to have had her suspicions thoroughly aroused,and went to Dumont's, where she learned that her lover was really Prince Louis Napoleon." This statement M. Dumont characterised as undiluted falsehood. "No woman ever made inquiries of me about the Prince with the exception of the old woman I tell you of," said H. Dumont. Continuing, he said that the story of any liaison whatever was entirely new to him, and he thought it was rather late in the day to float a canard about an illegitimate son. With respect to the alleged visit of the pretended mother and her child to Chislehurst, M. Dumont says that he is in frequent communication with the household at Camden-place, and never heard a suggestion of anything of the kind having occurred.