The subject on the menu - quite literally - was the poisoning of Napoleon, the b te noire of our entente cordiale. No figure is more emblematic of Anglo-French rivalry: to the French, he was the great moderniser, but to the English, he was an absurd figure with a penchant for starting, and winning wars. Now his manner of death has all the potential for a cause célèbre. While the English have always maintained that Napoleon died of cancer in 1821 while imprisoned on the island of St Helena, French senators heard over their guinea-fowl lunch yesterday that the emperor was poisoned with arsenic.
Scientists have analysed the DNA of a lock of Napoleon's hair taken at the time of his death and have concluded that the results are consistent with gradual poisoning. FBI investigators confirmed their findings. Previously neglected autopsies indicated no weight loss (thus ruling out cancer). Over the main course, the question was debated and, finally, between the removal of the plates and the serving of coffee, senators were allowed to address questions to the toxicologists, cancerologists, criminal investigators and other experts giving evidence.
All of this appears to confirm long-held suspicions that a shadowy and perhaps somewhat outré character called Monthalon, a Frenchman imprisoned alongside Napoleon, was in the pay of the English and, directed by the English governor of St Helena, Hudson Lowe, supplied the emperor with bitter almonds laced with arsenic. Yesterday's lunchtime discussions were billed as a relative soufflé, but such revelations of our poisoning past will do little to ease our beef into the mouths of French consumers.
