LINK WITH BONAPARTE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20602, 28 June 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

LINK WITH BONAPARTE.

NAPOLEON'S ATTIC HOUSE.

BUILDING TO COME DOWN. t INTERESTING RELICS, Paris is soon to lose yet another interesting link with Napoleon. An old house, which contains his first modest home in Paris, is to come down. The lionise is No. 5, Quai do Conti, a building of seven floors, a veritable skyscraper of the 18th century, at tho very top of which is a little garret where the future emperor, then a poor artillery cadet, took up his abode when he first went to Paris' from tho military school at Brienno in 1785. The attic, which has long been uninhabited, is reached after a trying climb rip a very narrow staircase. It consists of three liny rooms with floors of small red tiles. / Tho bedroom is about four yards sauare. It is now bare save for a black,marble fireplace of Napoleon's time. Napoleon's sitting-room, lit by a small window in tho roof, is but four yards by two, and next to it is a tiny kitchen and a still smaller lumber-room. From the email balcony of tho bedroom tho dreamy youth, who was to drench Europe in blood could, obtain a wonderful view over Paris where tho fires of tho Revolution had just gono out. On tho other side of the river, too. Napoleon could plainly see the Palace of the Tuileries to which less than a score of historic years were to take him as emperor. Tradition has it that it was here, too, that ho first met that young laundress —then 11 years of age—who was destined to pass into history and drama as " Madame Sans-Geno" and to marry Marshal Lefebvrc, the son of a miller and one of Napoleon's itoost brilliant lieutenants. VictdHen Sardou, tho great French dramatist, helped to immortalise that remarkable woman by his famous play. f Madame Sans-Cene." In 1853 tho Emperor Napoleon 111. had a tablet placed on the house to commemorate y its association with the great Corsican. The plaque will ,go to a museum when the house has been pulled down, for no other building is to bo erected on the site. The open space will bo called tho Place Pierre Curie," in memory of tho famous scientist who discovered radium. He was knocked down and fatally injured by a coal cart at tho corner of tho house s*hich is to disappear.