Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. ELIZABETH PATTERSON, WIPE OF PRINCE JEROME BONAPARTE. Born In Baltimore In 1785. Died In Baltimore, April, 1879. " There was about her the brilliancy of courts and palaces, the enchantment of a love story, the suffering of a victim of despotic power." — Eugene L. Didicr. There was once a real Beatrice Esmond. She was a living, enrapturing, American Beatrice Esmond, just as beautiful, witty, ambitious, and wilful as the one that Thackeray painted. She charmed with her eyes and slew with her tongue; so the admiring world declared. And she had a story, a sad, romantic story, that has become a part of history. When this Beatrice Esmond came into existence the stars, no doubt, performed great feats — the stais that mean princes, and popes, and emperors. But what the stars did we never shall know. Her horoscope never was taken. She was born into a quite commonplace and well-behaved American family, the Pattersons of Baltimore, and it was supposed that she herself would be like the rest ofthe family, quite commonplace and well-behaved. However, the stars or the fates or some sort of powers ordained it otherwise, and this Beatrice developed a most remarkable and troublesome personality. There is an ancient tradition by which we read that in all large flocks there must be one black sheep. We might say that the Patterson flock, which was large, was not without its one of questionable hue. And yet one hesitates to apply so ugly a term as black sheep to so exquisite a creature as Elizabeth Patterson. Small, dainty, and perfectly formed, with a crown of waving brown hair, hazel eyes of wonderful tenderness, features of delicate Grecian outline, she looked not at all like a black sheep and very like an angel. And an angel she certainly appeared to her little court of B...