The Third Uncle

Preface

Preface

    Do you think Napoleon would have been a better emperor had he not been such an absolute fanatic for ice-cream? That is to say, would he have been such a brutal, self-possessed little man if he had had a bowl of mushroom soup with finely ground pepper, instead of a well chilled and sweetened strawberry and stracciatella gelato before contemplating his next great strategy for France? Or do you think it would have had the effect of making him even more hyperactive? Sugar does that to some people, you know.

                                            Take me for example. 

    If I didn’t suffer from a particular, acute weakness for chilled milk and sugar I’d be sound asleep right now instead of relating this tale to you. You see, it’s the sugar in the ice-cream that gets me. It finds a way of negotiating the twisted canals of my intestines and battling its way straight to that part of my brain responsible for sound sleeps. It creeps up into my head and sneaks up behind the little amoebae in charge of slumber and deftly slays them with the ease and fury of a seasoned mediæval Oriental assassin who has just discovered his favourite concubine in bed with the local stable boy. 

    Naturally, this violent act results in leaving me prostrate, awake, and incredibly disheartened until the first rays of light peek out over the edge of the Earth, and break through the glorious morning mist to light upon the many rose tinted rooftops of my great city. The morning sparrows awake and flit from windowsill to window-box with their incessant cheerful songs announcing the new day, and then, I, exhausted, irritable, and defeated, grapple my way free from under my mangled linens, out my front door and across the cobbled street until I find a café where I can proceed to fill my tired veins with enough excellent cups of cappuccino to get me through the tedious chores of the next twenty-four hours.

    Did you know, in the fourteenth century Marco Polo was said to have brought the original recipe for ice-cream from the Far East to Europe? Now, it isn’t known where exactly in the Far East he actually got this recipe, and, in fact, less reputable historians are now trying to claim that he didn't really find his way to China after all - but this claim lacks merit as I recall him confiding in me after a dinner of a really excellent won-ton soup with spicy egg-roll that he liked nothing better than some raspberry and coffee gelato before an especially long voyage ... but that is the past, let us move up to the (almost) present. 

    I think, knowing Napoleon as I do, I can assure you he is an ice-cream and sugar loving, sleep deprived maniac, and natural born leader, military genius &ca. He, like I, always seems to be tired and grumpy, and, he is forever appearing in the morning in the same clothes he went to sleep in. How do I know this you ask? How could I know his habits so intimately? I know this because I am in a position to be a keen observer of those who are keen observers of the Emperor himself. I am not only a fantastically good scientist, archaeologist, diplomat and Man of Letters, but also a close confidant of those that are close confidants of those that know - such as the Vicomtesse of Noneville (who, it is said, has the ear of none other than Admiral Latouche-Treville, who famously repelled the attacks of Admiral Nelson near Boulogne in 1801) I am also a patriot, an Italian, and I am a conscientious observer of human nature, or, as some would have you believe, though I find the term vulgar - a spy. 

    Nevertheless, you can see fit to judge me as you will. It is true, and don’t act so surprised, that I have, from time to time, accompanied certain pieces of information out of, and across the ever-changing borders of Europe, but this is all to benefit the good over the evil, or, to be precise, the good over La France.  

   Now, let us get started, I invite you to pull a seat up to your window and look down over one of the most splendid piazzas in all of Roma. This splendid treasure of the Eternal City is a Baroque piazza famous for the spectacular Fountain of the Four Rivers by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and in this Piazza, called Navona, sat a man in the sun. This man, you will surmise, is I, and I have found myself at a particularly excellent table next to this fountain with a superior ice-cream that has happily reached its perfect state of not yet being melted, and no longer being completely frozen either. Watch as I skillfully plunge my spoon into the delicious mix of stracciatella and strawberry, swirling the debris of fruit and chocolate round and round into a small river of cream before adeptly navigating the curves of the bowl and expertly popping the chilled liquid into my mouth. As you may well imagine, I am content. In fact, you might well say I was in love, if it were possible to be in love with a chilled comestible. My mother did say that there was room for only one true love in a man’s life, and I have designed, built and furnished that room somewhere just above my big, brass belt-buckle.