“I am toiling painfully over this unfortunate Napoleonic book,” wrote Conan Doyle in July 1896. “It was more difficult for me than any of the big books.” Apparently I didn’t find the right key, but I need to somehow get rid of her.” “Uncle Bernak” did not come to the court from the very beginning and remained his stepchildren. Apparently, then he plunged too long into the era of Napoleon and the regency; he was tired of her, although he did not admit it to himself. And “Uncle Bernac” turned out to be fragmentary, as if the writer wanted to expand a wide panorama, but instead filled it only a third with the figures of Napoleon and his entourage. (John Dixon Carr. “The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle”)