To a certain extent, popular opinion respecting the young and lovely Eugenie was correct. She was indeed emphatically not the wife that Louis Napoleon should have chosen. A woman of intelligence and force of character might have done much to aid in founding his throne on a more stable basis. The downfall of the Empire, though probably inevitable, might have been delayed for at least a generation. But his choice had fallen upon a lady who had but one qualification for the position in which he had placed her--namely, extreme personal beauty. She was indeed kind-hearted and amiable, and among the temptations of a court as dissolute as was that of Louis XV. she preserved her reputation unspotted. But she was narrow-minded and unintellectual, a bigoted Catholic, and so blinded by national and religious prejudices that many of the most fatal mistakes of the Empire are directly traceable to her influence. An alliance with a royal princess would have strengthened the throne of Louis Napoleon: an alliance with a French lady would have drawn toward him the hearts of the nation. But Eugenie was neither a princess nor a Frenchwoman, nor yet a woman of vigorous and commanding intellect; and his union with her was undoubtedly a serious political error. But for some time all went well. She ruled gracefully over her allotted realm, which was that of Fashion. The influence of a crowned Parisian beauty over the social doings of the world can hardly be over-estimated. Eugenie invented toilettes that were copied by all the women in the civilized world: she invented crinoline, and added a new product to the manufactures of the earth. No woman better understood the art of dress than she. Certain of her toilettes have retained their celebrity to this day. Never did the art of costly dress reach so high a pinnacle. She fringed her ball-dresses with diamonds, and covered them with lace worth two thousand dollars a yard. Then, like many wise and economical ladies, she undertook to have her dresses made at home, and installed a dressmaker's establishment in the Tuileries, where these splendid garments were prepared under her immediate supervision. The workroom was directly over her private apartments. By means of a trapdoor, whose mechanism was skilfully dissimulated among the ornaments of the cornice and ceiling, a mannikin, arrayed in the garb that was in progress, could be lowered for the empress's inspection. This singular branch of the royal household was under the charge of a functionary whose business it was to purchase silks, velvets and laces at wholesale prices and to superintend the workwomen. The knowledge of its existence was soon spread abroad, and did the empress infinite harm. The petty economy of the proceeding horrified and disgusted the Parisians, who, economical themselves, have ever scorned that virtue in their sovereigns. Many of the partisans of the court denied the existence of such an