Excerpt from The Life of an Empress: Eugenie De Montijo These final pages are written as a necessary conclusion to our trilogy of the women of the Second Empire. Having sketched the pictures of Court and Society with a pen as discreet as possible, although by some it has been termed a frivolous pen, we had to determine in a wider manner the historical bearing of an important personality. Through circumstances, more than by her own will, she was the leading figure among the women of that Court and of that Society, and her position as such was naturally due to her sovereign rank, her influence for good or evil, and the extraordinary series of fate ful events in which she took part. This is an opportune time for recalling the career of such a personality, because we have not yet reached the period when gossip and reiterations of a common place nature shall run their free course unfettered by the hand of fate. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.