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Napoleon's love comes out 'in the wash'.

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Fonction NEWS

One of the word's finest collections of historical letters--including a note written by Napoleon to his lover Josephine--has turned up in a filing cabinet tucked away in a Swiss laundry room.

The letters in the treasure trove of almost 1,000 documents are to be auctioned by Christie's in London on July 5 and are expected to raise up to SFr 5.6 million (2.3 million [pounds sterling]). They were collected over 30 years by Austrian banker Albin Schram and include letters written by Winston Churchill, Peter the Great, Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Pushkin, John Donne and Queen Elizabeth I.

Thomas Venning, Christie's specialist in signed letters, said the find was a fluke. "It really is an incredibly dense, very carefully researched collection."

Schram wasn't much interested in conservation or display, however--the letters were kept in an old metal cabinet in the laundry room of his villa in Lausanne, ordered by size rather than author or date. When he died in 2005, his family barely knew they were there.

'Send three kisses'

One of the rare finds is a letter of apology written by Napoleon to his wife-to-be, Josephine, the...

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