A bust of Napoleon Bonaparte still sits upon the piano in the living room of Oak Alley’s “Big House.” The French Emperor was, in effect, Oak Alley’s prior landlord, until he sold all of Louisiana and much of the American west to Thomas Jefferson in 1804. A curtain in the background creates a gauzy tent-like effect, which I found appropriate for a man who spent much of his professional life living in battlefield tents. I squeeze the Emperor between that “tent” and the Christmas greens that seem to offer him a safe haven.