And I wuz dretful interested in the Napoleon rooms, full of the relicks of the great kingmaker.
There he lay, jest as nateral as life, on a bed, with his cloak wropped round him—the very cloak he wore at the battle of Marengo, and which he wropped round his body some like a pall when that heart had stopped its ambitious throbbin’s; and the world breathed freer.
Then there wuz his coronation robe—and if you’ll believe it, the coronation robe of poor Empress Josephine right by.
I’d a-gin ten cents cheerfully if I could have got a little piece of both on ’em for my crazy quilt. But I didn’t spoze they’d be willin’ to have me cut ’em off, so I didn’t tackle the guide about it.
And mebby it wuz jest as well, I d’no as I could have slept much under them two robes and meditated on what they had covered up. Love, triumph, doubt, jealousy, heartaches, despair would permeate the Josephine crazy block, and wild passions, and burnin’ ambition, and cold, remorseless neglect, and desertion would most likely surround the Napoleon crazed block.
I d’no but I should have the nightmair every time I tried to sleep under it.
Then there wuz his watch, stopped the minute he died, his ring, camp knife and fork, coffee-pot, snuff-box—if I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t believed he used snuff, the idee is somehow so incongrous of the hero of the Nile, the conqueror of Europe a-takin’ snuff. Why, all Jonesville kinder looks down on old Miss Moody because she takes snuff—black snuff, too, scented high with bergamot.
Napoleon’s tooth.
Wall, one of the most life-like relicks wuz one of his teeth; that wuz a part of the great emperor, or wuz once, before it wuz pulled out.