Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1875 — For Love of an Empress. [ARTICLE]

For Love of an Empress.

Lucy H. Hooper writes to the Philadelphia Press from Paris: 1 have heard lately the following melancholy and romantic little story relative to a royal lady whose personal charms and sweet and graceful manners have rendered her as.unconscious’y dangerous to her masculine adherents as ever Mary Stuart was of yore. It appears that during the latter years of the Empire the attention of the Empress, who ever has been distinguished as an intelligent and munificent patroness of art, was called to the works of a rising young painter—a Spaniard or an Italian by birth—who had just completed his studies and had achieved admission to the salon. She jvas pleased with his pictures, purchased several of them, and gave a commission for two or three others. Finally, at his earnest solicitation, she consented to sit to him for her portrait, which proved to be a striking likeness and a most admirable work of art. From that time forward the young painter haunted assiduously every public place where he could obtain a glimpse of his fair and royal patroness. When she went to the theater or the opera he invariably occupied an orchestra stall in front of the imperial box, and when she drove out he sought to cross her path in order to obtain from her one of those graceful bows and one of those sweet, melancholy smiles which she always bestowed with such courtesy upon those who saluted her. At last came the war and Sedan and the Republic, and park and theater and opera-box knew the fair face no more. Deprived of even those passing glimpses of the imperial lady, the young artist became morose, gloomy and misanthropical; he shut himself up in the solitude of his studio and employed himself cheifly in reproducing his portrait of the Empress —a work which met with a ready sale among the friends of imperialism in Paris from its intrinsic merit no less than the fidelity of its likeness. The other day he was found lying dead in his studio, with a pistol shot through the head, and with the discharged pistol still clutched in his lifeless hand. —The public school system of San Francisco, which was first* founded in 1849, now embraces 48 schools, 500 teachers and 25,000 scholars.