Giuseppella continued to nod. "Yes, that painting is currently in San Lorenzo Cathedral. If you like it..."
After Napoleon rattled off eight or nine top-tier artworks and received Giuseppella's promise to "gift" them to him, his smile finally blossomed. Raising his glass toward Milan's nobles, he said, "To the brave soldiers of France!"
Everyone hurriedly rose with their glasses and echoed in unison, "To the brave soldiers of France!"
Napoleon suddenly seemed to remember something and called out even louder, "To His Majesty the great King! To the 'Child of Divine Grace'!"
The more than one hundred nobles in the hall repeated the toast after him, then drained their glasses.
After Napoleon sat down, a nobleman with a face pitted by scars to his left leaned toward him obsequiously. "Colonel Bonaparte, I suppose you must have Italian blood. That is why Milan was destined to be liberated by you!"
Napoleon frowned. "Italian blood? Why would you say that?"
The nobleman clearly failed to notice the change in his expression and continued trying to ingratiate himself. "Bonaparte—look, what a quintessentially Italian surname. Anyone from the Apennine Peninsula would know at once that you are one of us."
He even smugly turned to those around him. "Everyone, isn't that right?"
A chorus of agreement immediately rose around the hall. Milan's nobles believed that calling someone "one of us" was a particularly intimate and flattering gesture.
Yet Napoleon's face darkened. He shook his head stiffly. "No. I am French. I do not have the slightest trace of Italian blood."
Yes, he was no longer that Corsican Restorationist.
He now had only one identity: a senior general of France, a Frenchman who had followed the Crown Prince into battle in the Southern Netherlands, then led the French Army in sweeping through Lombardy and won