One evening during the heyday of the Second Empire, when its structure seemed built en the rock and the Dynasty of the Napoleons assured of a century of power and prosperity, Desbarolles was summoned to the Imperial Chateau of the Tuileries - since burned to the ground by the Commune rioters - and invited to examine and read the hands of Napoleon III., and his beautiful wife, Eugenie.

The first indication that met the eyes of the great Chiromant when, bending over the hand of Queen Hortense's son was the total absence of any line or sign of future greatness. The Chirognomy of the hand showed the sovereign under his true colors: a confirmed libertine, a dreamer and a deceiver, a reckless man without principles or scruples, extraordinarily lucky in his past adventures, hut with the saddest doom in prospect. In health matters, the exact date of his death (1873) and the nature of his fatal ailment (stone in the bladder) were both clearly marked on the Line of Life and the lower Mount of the Moon. And a Line of Mars, following the Line of Life with the precision of a second rail on a railroad track, was read by Pesbarrolles in his favorite manner as "a brilliant exisitence terminating in exile."

And, in the Empess' hands, the ill-luck in store was also strangely in evidence, at the very hour of her greatest triumph. First, Desbarrolles announced the death of a near relative: the Duchess of Albe, Eugenie's sister, in perfect health at the time of the reading, died within a year. Then he spoke, hesitatingly, of a great fatality which was to assail the Empress in her 47th year. The courageous woman listened calmy to the revelation; simply asking:

"I shall die on the scaffold, shall I not? A Gypsy, who foretold my accession to a throne, when she read my hand in my girlhood days, also predicted that I should be beheaded at the very date you mention."

"There is no signs of such a tragedy in the hand of Your Majesty," Desbarrolles replied: "and yet this star on the Mount of Mars, connected with a line of influence from the Mount of Venus that cuts the Line of Life at 47, is a sure token of a coming catastrophe."

"Can nothing prevent it?"

"Nothing, I fear."

"Let it come, then," exclaimed the brave lady, and withdrawing her hand, she went on chatting most cordially with her guest concerning the topics of the day.

On September 4th, [870, Empress Eugenic. then in her 47th year, fled from the Tuileries palace, just as the mob Was entering it from the other side, and, deserted by her courtiers, owed her safe escape to the devotion and coolness of her American dentist. Dr, Evans.

Desbarrolles' prediction was accomplishes.