Amiens lay northwest of Compiègne. The Romans had first named the place Samarobriva; in Latin, briva meant bridge, while samaro referred to the Somme, meaning the bridge across the Somme. Later, the Franks took control of the region and renamed it Ambiani, where the prefix amb meant paired or doubled in Gallic.
With the construction of the cathedral in the twelfth century, Ambiani was eventually Frenchified into the Amiens of today.
Georgiana thought the word sometimes sounded very much like "amen." She had originally heard that they were going to visit it specifically in commemoration of the Treaty of Amiens.
But she had not expected them to head south all the way, straight toward Paris.
A temporary change of route was nothing unusual, but shortly after they arrived in Chantilly, Georgiana was locked up. It was not until a week after the main force had departed that someone came for her.
The person who came was a professor from the Paris Faculty of Law named Julian Ouvrard. Though he had not followed Napoleon to Egypt, he had participated in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and had even served as Napoleon's law tutor.
By the time she returned to Paris, everything was already over. There had been none of the expected riots or any other disturbances.
Then she was sent to Saint-Cloud.
The place was permeated by an eerie, suffocating atmosphere, and then she was escorted to the sitting room assigned to her.
The room had originally been designed in an Indian style, except it had looked like a brothel before.
Now it seemed to have been redecorated and looked like a fortune-teller's tent.
Bonaparte was waiting for her beside the desk, leafing through a book in his hand.
It was Poems of Kabir, a Sufi collection she usually read for