Word: empresse
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Ever since Akihito turned 18 six years ago, his father's Imperial Household Board has been looking for a bride for him, and the Japanese have been in an agony of suspense over who their 125th Empress will be. To find her, the Board, whose staid members are the guardians of protocol, has canvassed the families of 860 former princes, counts, viscounts, barons and assorted daimyo (warlords). It has investigated the state of each family's finances, made copious notes on the looks, talents, and IQs of all eligible daughters. It also sent emissaries to all local ward...
...Orsini and three Italian fellow conspirators had arrived in Paris with their cargo of "what looked like a clutch of monstrous birds' eggs, spiny and fantastic." On the appointed night Orsini and his friends joined the crowd in the Rue Lepelletier, down which Louis Napoleon and Empress Eugénie were about to drive to the opera...
...opera house, the master of ceremonies had just murmured to a friend, "The policing of the streets is perfect," when three heavy explosions brought down most of the windows and a candelabra. Outside, the imperial carriage collapsed and the blood of an escorting general spurted over the Empress' dress. Shaken but only slightly scratched, Louis Napoleon and Eugénie stepped from the remains of their carriage into a scene of carnage. One doctor alone reported 156 innocent casualties, including eight dead and three blinded...
...beginning of the end of foreign rule in Italy. The new Kingdom of Italy, established seven years later, would have to decide whether Felice Orsini was a hero or an inept killer, or both. As to his bomb-throwing predilections, he might have answered with the famous line Empress Eugénie is said to have spoken as she stepped from her wrecked, blood-spattered carriage: "C'est le métier [It's all in the day's work...
...Josephine's château at Malmaison, Napoleon (a very bad shot) delighted in shooting at the Empress' swans to torment her. When in good spirits, he would slap Josephine on the shoulders while she begged, "Do stop it, do stop it, Bonaparte." Josephine's maid, Mlle. Avrillon, recalled, "We could estimate the degree of his good humor by how much he hurt us. One day when he was obviously better pleased than usual, he pinched my cheek so hard I could not repress a scream...