King Louis I of Etruria had come to Paris this time to be invested. His queen, Maria Luisa of Spain, had originally been meant to come as well, but she excused herself on the grounds that she had only recently given birth and could not travel conveniently.
Far away in Switzerland, Madame de Staël quipped, "Napoleon Bonaparte uses royal descendants for experiments. Now even kings have to come and pay him homage."
After Napoleon received this collateral descendant of the Bourbon royal family and attended the welcoming ceremony, Talleyrand took over the task of entertaining him. At the time, there was a line in the opera Oedipus: "I possess supreme royal power, yet it is not what I desire."
At those words, thunderous applause erupted from the audience.
So many operas were staged in Paris every day, yet very few were remembered. Gaudin Poitvin had already been remembered for "He was a good man, but a bad king," and besides, he had plans of his own.
Napoleoni found Georgiana a new personal maid named Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint-Aubin. Before the French Revolution, she had been known as the Countess of Genlis. She had also once served as an adviser to the Orléanist Party, was skilled at writing novels, and had even published two of them. Like Sophie, she could serve as Georgiana's secretary.
As for her steward, he made no arrangements, or rather, he never mentioned the matter at all.
That water tower would certainly become a new landmark of Paris in the future. In Napoleon's words, he had finally found a use for artists.
He asked her what she wanted the tower to look like.
At first, she thought of Dante and the Pope's Well at Orvieto. It reminded her of the labyrinth she had encountered in the