Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1910 — STORY OF INK STAIN. [ARTICLE]

STORY OF INK STAIN.

One Caused by Archibald Forbes Attributed to Napoleon’s Rage. Pens and furniture used in the signing of famous treaties and documents recall Archibald Forbes’ experience after Sedan, the London Chronicle says. After witnessing Napoleon’s interview with Bismark at a wayside cottage and his Subsequent surrender, Forbes and a fellow war correspondent slept at the chateau which the fallen emperor had occupied the night before. The bedroom was just as Napoleon had left it and by the bed the open book with which he had read himself to sleep. It was Lytton’s "Last of the Barons.” Sitting at the ..adjoining writing table Forbes wrote his dispatches, while his companion gnawed at a hath bone, their sole remainder of food. Irate at the little eating it furnished, he flung it across the room and upset the Inkstand into which Forbes was dipping. ♦ ♦ * When Forbes revisited the chateau a month or so later the ink stain was pointed out as caused by Napoleon’s rage on learning the German terms of peace.