Baur opens in Port-au-Prince in the first weeks of 1859, amid the celebrations that followed the fall of Faustin I's empire and the restoration of the Republic.

That April the new president, Nicolas Fabre Geffrard, appeared before the national legislature: fifty-three years old, and lately the soldier who had unseated an emperor. After a long speech denouncing the exiled Faustin, he swore fidelity to popular government, announced his first political changes, then picked up a small gavel and struck the imperial crown three times.

The crown became a museum piece after that. What it symbolized, Baur notes, proved harder to be rid of.