Page 78 - 2003 - Atlantic Islands

The plan of the house is a T-shape with three rooms set in shotgun fashion before the

arms of the T are reached and rooms stretch out in both directions from the mast of

the T. The first room contains the two globes by the front door and the billiards table

which Napoleon used as a table for his maps, sketches, and manuscripts as he wrote

and dictated his memoirs and descriptions of his battle plans and strategies and

analyses of how they were carried out. Ironically, he never played billiards and the

table ultimately became his autopsy table. It was covered with a white sheet on our

visit.

There are pictures of the Emperor both alive and in death on the walls and some of

them are quite movingly depicted. The walls were a brilliant Irish yellow-green as

they had apparently been in Napoleon’s day with a geometric border at the top. The

78