Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

we had plenty of time before us: our greatest anxiety was to visit the house in which the great Napoleon was born. Our party arrived first, as we had a very clever guide, who promised if possible to introduce us to La Signora Grossetti, saying we should have a great treat, as the old lady, who was then eighty-three years of age, had been all her life in the Buonaparte family in Corsica. We luckily met the old lady just coming out, and upon being introduced, she immediately returned to do us the honours of the house. She has been housekeeper there for above thirty years. After visiting the apartments which are always on view--viz., the drawing-room, dining-room, concert and ball room, library, and the small bed-room in which that almost fabulous hero was born, I asked the old gentlewoman, as a special favour, to show me the kitchen. No one was ever more astonished than she appeared to be at my request. “Why, surely there is nothing to be seen there but ruins, and I don’t even know where the key is.” All this redoubled my interest. We went up stairs, and found in an old drawer three rusty keys, which we brought down; one of them opened the door, which, on being pushed rather forcibly, fell from its hinges. We then descended, and opened the shutters, which likewise tumbled from their fastenings. After visiting the various departments which constitute a gentleman’s kitchen, I wrote upon the stove the following letter to the public press, which, through the mismanagement of my servant, who threw it into the post without paying the postage, never reached its destination:-- _Twenty Minutes in the Kitchen of the House of the Emperor Napoleon the First._ MR. EDITOR,--It is an incontestable truism that “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good;” but in this case it will be found the reverse. Owing to most terribly rough weather, in fourteen hours from our departure from Marseilles, _en route_ to Constantinople, we are brought up here by our prudent Captain, sheltering us in the bosom of