When a group of young "new money" came to the Tuileries Palace, Bonaparte once told them a story. One day, a wealthy Marseille merchant received a young man from a good family. The young man carried a letter of introduction with him. After reading it, the merchant found the paper expensive, yet three-quarters of it was blank. So he tore off those blank sheets and put them in a paper box for reuse.
The young man did not mind. He accepted the merchant's invitation to dine at his home. There, he was left dumbfounded by the merchant's affluent household and refined taste. The merchant's elegant, learned conversation was also utterly unlike his practical manner at work. The young man was very pleased with the dinner party, yet he could not hide his confusion over the merchant's earlier behavior. The merchant explained, "You are still too young. You do not understand the masses. This is the only true power."
Accompanied by the guards, Georgiana arrived near Laeken Castle. There, she saw a group of farmers herding free-range pigs into newly built pens.
They had once been free and happy pigs, searching the forest for the tubers they liked. Now that they had been caught, they inevitably wailed as though they, too, knew that every captured pig faced the fate of slaughter.
Before long, the farmers poured a bucket of bright red stuff into their troughs. It was beet pulp left over after sugar extraction. Due to technical limitations, the beet pulp still contained a great deal of sugar. Pigs, like horses, loved sugar. They ate with great delight and soon forgot the terror of being captured.
Meanwhile, the farm was busy repairing a building with a clatter. It was the smoking workshop for making bacon. Due to technological limitations, bacon could