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Peripatetic Parts (2)
Pass the Fava Beans Louis XIV had ruled France for 72 years, from 1643 to 1715. This made his reign the longest in European History. He was known as the "Sun King." He established his court at Versailles and succeeded in making all things French the fashion of the age. During the French Revolution the Royal Necropolis at Saint-Denis was desecrated by revolutionaries who wished to destroy anything related to the monarchy. They broke into the Royal Crypt of Louis XIV and stole the heart of the monarch. The heart eventually came into the hands of an Englishman, the Very Reverend William Buckland The Very Reverend Buckland had doubts about the certainty of an afterlife and had done numerous experiments in a attempt to secure immortality. The strangest of these concerned Louis XIV's royal heart. The Reverend Buckland had the heart sautéed, slow roasted and served with a side of broad beans. He then ate the heart for Christmas supper. He noted that it was a little on the chewy side, but was otherwise satisfactory in every way. There was no record of his choice of wine.
Emauel Swedenborg's skull was sold at auction at Sotheby's in London, for $3,200.
Napoleon' penis suffered a similar indignity but fetched $38,000 from famed urologist, John Kingsley Lattimer in a 1969 auction.
We've lost track of Rasputin's privates, Rasputin lost track of them when he was beaten, stabbed, shot, strangled and castrated, shortly before his death by drowning in the river Neva. His maid was said to have found it while cleaning up the apartment, after the murder. In Paris of the 1920s a cult of Russian women were said to worship an object believed to be the organ in question. This object was later acquired by his only surviving child, Marie Rasputin. Upon acquiring it she was inspired to become a ventriloquist and later became a celebrated animal trainer. She traveled to South America and joined a Circus in Buenos Ares. She wrote a book with the assistance of Dr. Roberta Ripple attempting to mitigate the abuse history had bestowed upon her father's memory and member. Marie died in California in 1977, somewhat short of her ambition. A storage locker containing items belonging to the subsequently deceased Dr. Ripple was purchased by a Michael Augustine of Northern California. A black wizened object was found in a velvet pouch. Marie's manuscript and the wizened object were sold at Bonham's auction in 1994, in London for three hundred and fifty pounds, to a person or persons unknown. The missing member was last seen, held aloft, at a press conference at the auction house. It was displayed by Victoria Blakely-Porter who. of the two, is the only one who fielded questions.
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