Have you read Désirée by Anne-Marie Selinko?
I read it when I was in school; I think it was the first really thick book I read.
Yes, it came even before Gone with the Wind.
I loved it so much that I read it again. And, I think, again.
And then, I found an old, old copy of it at my grandparents’ place, and how could I not read it again?
It’s the story of Napoleon’s first love – the daughter of a silk merchant, Désirée Clary. When I read the book, all those things were just names to me. Marseilles, Stockholm, the Tuileries …
And then I went to Marseilles.
There I was, thinking only about Alexandre Dumas and how close we were to the Chateau d’If. We went, of course, by metro. And guess what we found?
It isn’t easy to tell, but the second station on the line is Désirée Clary!
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