Betsy and the Emperor (9781439115879) by Staton Rabin

my fame was undiminished. If only heaven had sent me a bullet in the Kremlin! History would have compared me to Julius Caesar!”
    â€œIf those fools hadn’t stopped him at Waterloo,” Huff said again, “he would have gone on to unite the globe, cleaning out the cobwebs of ignorance and injustice from every nation on earth!”
    Bonaparte seemed well pleased with Huff’s summation and added nothing to it. As for me, I merely shrugged.
    â€œLook here,” Huff said to me, standing up with difficulty. He took my hand and led me to an old trunk. Huff struggled to release the catch on a chain around his neck. But his hands did not work too well for such a delicate operation.
    â€œAllow me,” the emperor said, undoing the catch. A key dangled from the chain, and with a trembling hand, Huff used it to open the trunk.
    Inside was a large flat rock with strange letters carved into its shiny black surface.
    â€œ Mon Dieu! The Rosetta stone!” Bonaparte exclaimed. “But—how?”
    â€œNot the original, Your Highness,” Huff explained. “Just a copy.”
    I held the lamp over the peculiar rock with its indecipherable message.
    â€œSo?” I said.
    â€œThis stone,” Huff said, taking both my hands in his and staring at me with singular intensity, “will unlock the mysteries of the ages. The secrets of the Pyramids! The riddle of the Sphinx!”
    To me, it looked like a rock, not a riddle—with a bunch of boxes and birds and squiggly lines drawn all over it.
    â€œHold the lamp closer,” Huff instructed me. I did as he said. “This stone comes from Egypt, land of the Pharaohs. It is very ancient. Written on it is a single decree in three different tongues. Here we have Greek. Here, the same message in another ancient language, demotic.” The emperor and I looked over his shoulder as he pointed. “We scholars know how to read those languages. And here, our great mystery to solve: Egyptian hieroglyphs. We have only to compare the letters of the known languages to the symbols in the unknown one, and we will break the code.”
    â€œSo?” I said again. “And what does this have to do with the emperor?” Bonaparte surely did not like that I was talking about him as if he weren’t present, but for the moment he said nothing.
    â€œThe emperor and his men retrieved the original of this precious relic during his military and scientific expedition to the shores of the Nile River in 1799. And, with it, we will be able to open a whole new world of understanding. We shall open a window on the magnificent world of ancient Egypt! How did they mummify their dead? We shall find out. Who built the Pyramids, how, and why? Where are the tombs of the great Pharaohs, with all their golden treasures, to be found?”
    â€œHave you broken the code, as you say, monsieur?” Bonaparte asked.
    â€œI am working on it,” Huff replied. “Not yet.” He lowered the trunk lid.
    â€œIt is treasures like these,” Huff said, “that Napoleon Bonaparte lifted from the depths of intellectual darkness into the sunlight of reason. Wherever he has gone, he has left the treasure of enlightenment behind.” The old man brushed the dust from his hands, as if he felt he’d had the final word.
    I would have responded with an argument, but I really didn’t know what to say. I had always admired and respected Huff. He had been one of my few confidants when I was younger. His admiration for Bonaparte took me entirely by surprise, and, I mustconfess, my respect for Huff’s judgment made me feel rather confused. Was it merely because he was half French that he praised the emperor? Or might it just possibly be that Huff was correct about our famous visitor’s merits and that I was guilty of misjudging Bonaparte?
    Before I could say anything, the emperor removed a pocket watch from his coat and glanced at it. He addressed