"A dozen shirts, torn," was the answer.
"Handkerchiefs, five."
On the walls of the room where we ate hung beautiful old engravings of
Napoleon I in his daily life at the Chateau of Compiegne. Napoleon
receiving honoured guests in the vast Galerie des Fetes, with its
polished floor and long line of immense windows; Napoleon and his bride
in the Salon des Dames d'Honneur, among the ladies of Marie Louise;
Napoleon listening wistfully--thinking maybe of lost Josephine--to a
damsel at the harp, in the Salon de Musique; Marie Louise smirking
against a background of _teinture chinoise_; Napoleon observing a
tapestry battle of stags in the Salle des Cerfs; Napoleon on the
magnificent _terrasse_ giving a garden party; Napoleon walking with his
generals along the Avenue des Beaux Monts, in the park. But these
pictures rather teased than pleased us, because in war days only the
army enters palace or park.
Brian was luckier than the rest of us! He had been through the chateau
and forgotten nothing. Best of all he had liked the bedchamber of Marie
Antoinette, said to be haunted by her ghost, in hunting dress with a
large hat and drooping plume. The Empress Eugenie, it seemed, had loved
this room, and often entered it alone to dream of the past. Little could
she have guessed then how near she would come to some such end as that
fatal queen, second in beauty only to herself.
Even if Julian O'Farrell's significant glance hadn't called my attention
to his sister, I should have noticed how Dierdre lost her sulky look in
listening to Brian.
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