“When Napoleon Bonaparte (l769-l82l) was alive, he could not conquer the whole world, but when he dies, he does accomplish his dream.” This was how French professor Dr. Wu Hsi-deh told T.K.U.’s Women Faculty Club members as they were touring around the exhibition room where the paraphernalia relating to Napoleon Bonaparte is on display.

He was actually quoting Chateaubriand, the famous French poet’s words to reassess the posthumous fame of Napoleon. The time was one Tuesday afternoon, October 23; the occasion was Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Memorial Hall, Taipei. In fact, they were led by Dr. Flora C.I. Chang, Chair of the Women Faculty Club to visit the show. Luckily, Mr. Tseng I-shih, Deputy Director of the Memorial Hall, had accompanied them and given them an interesting briefing on the Napoleonic pageant, which made their tour even more entertaining as if they were neighbors of the French emperor and his beloved queen Josephine.

Prof. Wu kept on enlightening the visitors. ‘The Napoleonic Code” which had been compiled under the auspices of the emperor and the research materials he brought back from his Egyptian campaign, he said, have been and are still exerting great influence upon the world at large. Take our “Complete Code of the Six Laws”, for instance, there is no denying it is a spin-off of the original Napoleonic Code. Other than that, Napoleon Bonaparte had improved so many aspects of the French life style, including art, architecture, fashion trend, etc. The Arch of Triumph monument in Paris, as a matter of fact, is an example par excellence.

Dr. Flora C.I. Chang, V.P. for Administrative Affairs, concluded the tour by saying that thanks to the people who organized this tour, we must look forward to more activities like this one in the future.