The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-11

hill. There he erected from his own plans his new tuileries, but in memory of the demolished mill he christened it tie Mulini
 The streets of Portoferraio consist chiefly of three steep stairways up the fort-crowned height and several shelves across the face of the hill These stairs are named via Napoleone via Victor Hugo and via Garibaldi, their names recalling three interesting and diverse characters. who at differ cnt times sailed into the little E1ban world. Garbaldi hid there for awhile in the troubled days of AS, and there Hugo passed three or four years of his infancy, while his father, an army officer under Bonaparte, first consul of France, was aiding to establish French rule in the island.
 At the foot Teach of those street stairways lies the harbor, while Fort Stella, the Mulini palace and Fort Fal- cone stand in row at the top. The Mulini, which is the property of the Italian government now, really is no palace at all, but seyerly plain. mod est dwelling, it's plastered walls ris- ing one and two stories from little public square, the Piabbale Napoleone Some officials are now installed in it. bUt the green shutters are tightly closed on the Emperors own special apartments, which are silent and un- tenanted, save for the spiders that spin their webs in the bare rooms where once Napoleon himself wove a clever little web.
 At the end of the house stone wall shuts in the yard, but the custodian swings the gate on it's creaking hinges the visitor passes in between two stone posts, on which cannon balls are piled and is in the haunted stiffness of the little dooryard garden of the imperial exile. It is still fragrant with the bloom of flowers, and in circlei of purple lilies stands a marble Minerva, the statue and the encireling flowers combining to sug- gest the warrior who put on the purple There are also a palm and pine tree which seem to symbolize the wide rule that he exchanged for his island empire
 And did he not boast that T overlook Europe from my windows?' Well, there are the windows, giving on the garden There across the flower patch is the para pet of the little terrace, hanging high above the blue Tyrrhenan sea, and there is Europe, away off through the cerulean haze where the mountains of Italy break the horizon.
 If the Mulini was not much of a palace l. was a really charming prison The Emperors method of furnishing 1t was delightfully."- characteristic. It was part Of th.s irony of his exile that his nearest port
 
 him of the days when he was distributing crowns and coronets, and when he created lis sister Elisa the Princess of Piombino, with more subjects beneath her rule than the allied sovereigns had left him when they remade the map of Europe.
 But the vision of the bold headland or the principality did not awaken vain and bitter reflections On the contrary, it suggested the thought that when the Aus trians drove Elisa out she must in her haste have left behind her some highly serviceable household things. and he lIn- mediately sent his fleet to PlomDlno Wlth orders to commandeer everything. The Austrian custodians protested, but what could they do under the guns of the Elban dreadnaughts, which law menacingiy be- fore the harbor wall? Fortune sent the Emperor at the same time another cargo Of furniture, which was most opportuneiy wrecked on the island coast. This proved to be the property of a brother-in- law the Prince Borghese, and Napoleon, oniy kept it in the family when he coniiscated 1t to his own use.