Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1879 — A Celebrity. [ARTICLE]

A Celebrity.

W'oHhlugton Cor. Cincinnati Gaxette. The death of Madame de Catacazy, .wife of the Russian minister, between whom and President Grant, existed an “unpleasantness,” revives tne memory of her presence here at the capital, and the varied romance of her life. She was a rival of Eugenie in her young days before Louis Napoleon made the flippant beauty his wife, against the advice and counsel of his court Madame Catacazy’s first husband was a French nobleman much her senior and evidently not over much to her liking, as after living with him for several years and bearing him children, she left him and her children for Catacazy, whom, according to her church, she could not marry, as no divorce could be granted. Years afterward, her first husband* died, and then she was married to Catacazy. There is a picture of her now.at Brady’s gallery on Pennsylvania avenue, representing her posed in the position so familiar to us of France’s unhappy Empress Eugenia. looking over her shoulder, and presenting just a little more than the side view of her face and the entire v|ew of her back and shoulere. The picture is somewhat idealized, as paintings generally are, but it has caught the coloring of her magnificent hair to perfection. I never deemed her as beautiful as admiring critics painted her, because, although possessed of a splendid figure and rare coloring and clad in magnificent toilets, I could never divert myself of the suspiction of cruelty which lurked at the corners of her thin red lips and in the distended nostrils of her almost transparent nose, and which looked from the depths of her cold blue eyes. She always made me shudder when I looked at her long, and yet when she smiled

r and talked in the fascinating way she knew so well how to employ, I wonder at myself /or thinkifig her Cruel. The house occupied by her while here, on I street, opposite Franklin square, is is now used for a boarding house. In many a bouse in this city can be found souvenirs of china, exquisite Sevres, the Catacazy curtains of heavy satin brocade of filmy lace, pieces of the Catacazy furniture, as everything was sold at public auction when Mons. Catacazy was recalled, and the rarest things were sold ftfr very trifling prices. For instance, I saw one of the Sevres pieces, which must have originally dost $8 or $lO and was bought for $1.60!- The cut glass went for mere songs, and a pitcher of Melton ware only brought $5, while a Wedgewood plaque cost but $2 at auction price. Gleaner.