Word: napoleons
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Perugino's Crucifixion with St. John, the Magdalen and St. Jerome, a magnificent triptych, hung peacefully over the altar of the Dominican Church in many-towered San Gimignano for 400 years, until Napoleon swept through Italy. Unlike most of Napoleon's booty, it was not deeded permanently to the Louvre, slipped through a number of private hands to land finally in Moscow. One of the greatest of the Hermitage treasures, it cost Mr. Mellon the least...
Died. Auguste Escoffier, 88, famed chef; in Monte Carlo. Beginning as a member of Napoleon Ill's kitchen staff during the Franco-Prussian War, Escoffier became a cook in the grand manner, fed Kaiser Wilhelm salmon steamed in champagne, plied King George V with variations of cream cheese (a favorite dish), invented peach Melba. Other Escoffier creations: Sauce Diable, quail Richelieu, filet of sole Waleska. He knew more than 5,000 recipes, wrote a monumental cookbook which he modestly prefaced: "It would be absurd to aspire to fix the destinies...
...into exile on a far-off island in the South Atlantic soon found that St. Helena's was a poor climate for noble sentiments. Though their English captors attempted, in their way, to be humane, their blundering tactlessness soon drove the exiles to a frenzy of outraged sensibility. Napoleon's honor was touchy, and Sir Hudson Lowe, the British Governor, was a choleric, literal-minded martinet. The French and their warders were at loggerheads from the start. Said Napoleon of Sir Hudson: "The man is a coward of long experience and a gaoler from taste." Napoleon...
...When Napoleon finally refused to have anything to do with Sir Hudson, hid himself in the house, the Governor ordered a luckless officer to report daily on his prisoner's presence. For weeks the officer and Napoleon played hide-&-seek. After fruitless days of snooping, the desperate man broke into Longwood one day, caught Napoleon in the bathtub, was pursued down passageways with royal imprecations. When Napoleon, for something to do, had a sunken garden built, the excavations to Sir Hudson's fevered mind, looked like earthworks...
...Napoleon's followers found that exile was not the pinnacle of glory he had suggested it might be. One after another they quarreled, struck attitudes, were glad to go, until only two trusted followers were left. After five years of it even they, though they shed tears, sighed with relief when a stomach ulcer at last gave their master eternity, themselves and their jailers release...