Aide De Camp
It was common knowledge that the Emperor hated the English. His mother was English and he believed she was responsible for his withered arm. When he asked the Pianist to bang out "I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside" he was feeling sentimental about the superb show his sailboat had made so long ago at Cowes Week and what a pleasure it had been to thumb his nose at his English cousins. It was a shame they had fallen out. It was the old lady’s fault. There weren’t any half-English snobs invited to the hunting lodge that weekend where the Emperor and his cronies were celebrating a day of hunting. They had bagged a brace of deer, five chamois, a baby boar, and enough woodcock to make the sideboard groan. But if the English relatives had seen the gusto with which the Emperor had slaughtered the noble animals, they would have said he was mad. He thought the English were mad, starting with his mother. It was a standoff nobody could win. That...