![]() ![]() None the less, the reading of seven or eight hundred Napoleonic anecdotes skimpily pinned to a screen of conventional political history conveys eventually some powerful general impressions of the two Empires and the family’s behavior between the “whiff of grapeshot” and the death of the Prince Imperial in the Zulu War. The other two works are volumes of more or less absorbing gossip, and had much legend been winnowed from fact, they would be pretty thin volumes too. Kurtz’s life of the Empress Eugénie is a serious biography, attempting an objective estimate of the subject’s influence on public affairs and to distinguish fact from legend. The career of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, was a huge prefiguration of ten thousand small Corsican careers to come.Īll three of these books are concerned with Bonaparte personality, rather than policy. Madame Mère will be installed as concierge of the university hostel, and continue to regard her son as a contemptible failure although the King of Holland has been installed in the best “ bureau de tabac,” the King of Spain has been intruded into the public prosecutor’s office, the King of Württemburg runs the city hall department concerned with building tenders, and the Princess Borghese has the best stretch of sidewalk on the Rue de la République. Emperor of the underworld in a provincial city, Napoleon will marry, in an overblown suburban church, a blonde Breton girl of superior family and subnormal will-power he will cow her with gigantic, orchidaceous presents and bewilder her with a sexuality in which violence and greed fail to compensate for premature ejaculation and prudishness. One day, a gifted French director will film a new life of Bonaparte. ![]()
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