212 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



A fountain was arranged in the centre of the room and the walls were 

 decorated with frescoes. They are Egyptian scenes, a memory of 

 Napoleon's sojourn there. At St. Helena he said that the best artists 

 of Italy had competed for the honour of painting the frescoes; but 

 this was one of his many bursts of grandiloquence, for the frescoes are 

 not greatly beyond the resources of a village painter. The dining- 

 room is in front of this hall and has a beautiful view of the bay and 

 of Porto Ferraio. Napoleon's own bedroom is at the right of the dining 

 room as the observer looks towards the bay; Bertrand and Drouot, 

 his faithful companions, had rooms on the left. Minor members of 

 the staff slept in the three or four small rooms on the lower level and 

 there, too, was the imperial kitchen. The food was carried up an out- 

 side staircase in the open air and then through the hall to the dining- 

 room. One could hardly imagine an arrangement more inconven- 

 ient and Napoleon must often have had the grievance of Louis XV, 

 who, since his food had to travel far before it reached him, could rarely 

 get anything served hot. Napoleon's bathroom on the ground floor 

 below his bedroom is reached by a staircase so narrow that it must 

 have been a trial to his corpulence. On the wall by the bath is a 

 fresco of a naked woman looking at herself in a mirror and the phrase 

 is painted on the wall, "Qui odit veritatem odit luceni.'' The figure of 

 the woman is not unlike Canova's statue of Napoleon's sister, Pauline. 

 The lower levels of Elba are warm in summer and by August 

 Napoleon found the heat stifling. The remedy was a flight to the 

 mountains. His realm was, as he said, small, but it did not lack 

 variety. It was on the heights above Marciana that Napoleon took 

 refuge from the heat and thither the visitor to Elba follows him. The 

 road strikes inland from the head of the bay at Porto Ferraio, crosses 

 a high neck of land, and then descends to the open sea on the north 

 shore of the island. The road now used was planned by Napoleon. 

 It is a costly task to create great stretches of highway and Napoleon's 

 means were not equal to his ambitions; but later generations have 

 completed what he began. At times the road winds along the edge 

 of high cliffs from which one looks down upon the surf far below, a 

 gleaming white, bordering the changing blues and greens of the rolling 

 sea beyond it. At Marciana Marina the road comes down to the sea 

 and the great waves dash in at one's feet. This little town has a long 

 and checkered history. There is no harbour but only an open road- 

 stead. Its virile people have long clamoured for the building of a 

 harbour and the work is now going on slowly. It throws some light 

 on Italian politics that an election placard on one of the walls read: 

 "If you want the harbour built, vote for — ." One seems to have heard 

 of similar cries elsewhere. 



