(The fictional story of Napoleon told through his dog, a Newfoundland.)
Guess what “The Author” (AKA my charming self, and no, I’m NOT related to the Charmings…) found in Wonderland? My source said it’s a juicy story all about dogs, and love, and rose gardens, and Josephine…sadly, the source was only allowed to bring the first chapter out of Wonderland, and so it reads a bit dull and DOGmatically. But the source said if you like it, she’ll contact Caterpillar Smoking Weed, the mayor of Wonderland, and see if we can skip to chapter 39 to get the romantic, juicy, dime novel stuff! And of course, if that doesn’t work (diplomacy is expensive) we may have to write a new Cinderella play… ENJOY!
Update: Caterpillar Smoking Weed said we had to “catch the rabbit” to earn chapter 39. We didn’t.
It is quite a horror, the way history has a tendency to repeat itself. It’s like when I look into a mirror. The mirror reflects off of my glassy black eyes, so that you can see the mirror inside my pupils, over and over again through the reflection of the mirror. One time I saw my reflection in a pool of blood in Toulon. I was only a small pup at that time, but I remember my mother telling me we would see be free from “all the horrors of this world.” I never saw them afterwards, but I imagined they went to the sea below, where mother said father had gone, and his father, and his…
A lot of humans came. It was all bloody and such. And then, a young human who seemed to be the leader of this new group of humans saw me and took me with him, and he cleaned the blood off of me.
I heard rumors from the camps about how my master was always saving people. See, from what I gather, there was this thing called the Directory. They sort of stopped the Reign of Terror, which I don’t know much about, and tried to make the world a happier place. That’s why they liked my master. One time he was saving people in Egypt, (from the British again…of course!) only it wasn’t going so well. So the Directory called us back home to sweet France (what I relief! It was frightening in Egypt!) Monsieur Directory seemed very nice although he was criticized for being rather stern sometimes. Strange, too. His head was called Abbe Sieyes, and it used to be a former revolutionary champion of the Third Estate! My master talked mostly with the Directory’s head, which I suppose makes sense because the mouth is in the head. IN 1799 Monsieur Directory named my master a “temporary consul” which I suppose means leader because that’s what everyone says it is.
My friend, Monsieur Bones, asked me how I felt about it. “You must be proud of Monsieur Bonaparte. He is helping organized this new regime!”
I told him, as every Newfoundlander ought, that I loved my master no matter what, and I said it very politely, too, like a proper Frenchdog.
The head, Sieyes, was always talking and said “Napoleon Bonaparte (that’s my master, you see) would provide “confidence from below, and authority from above.” It sounded something grand, and although I am not exactly sure what confidence means, I always felt happy at his feet, which I suppose meant that I had confidence from below. At this time I did not see my master as much as I wished, and would always wait for him wherever he left me. Sometimes, he would throw a bone for me or tell me “bon chien.”
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