The shadow of Holy Week hangs over The Italian Mistress, the novel in brief form by Jean-Marie Rouart. The academician brings back to life the exile of Napoleon on the eve of the Hundred Days in a historical novel with Stendhalian tones.
It is Napoleon's stay on the island of Elba, from his arrival until his final escape, that we are talking about here. The methods are the same: evoking by refraction the figure of the great outlaw by unwinding the tangle of schemes of sovereigns.