Strout examines a dream of Henry James's which James described in his autobiography. The nightmare replayed a childhood visit to the Louvre. A parallel exists between this dream and his fiction, in particular his short story, "The Jolly Corner." Strout postulates that the dream is linked to James's catastrophic failures in the commercial theatre. In the dream, James turns the tables on those who rejected him in his theatrical ambitions; the person who had been made to feel like a frightened little boy when he was savagely booed on the stage became triumphant in the dream of being in the Louvre where art reverberates with the glory of Napoleonic conquest. Parallel themes are seen in "The Jolly Corner" and in James's essay, "The American Scene." The author suggests that the dream reflects a Napoleonic conquest through popular success on the stage. It is significant that at the end of his life James suffered from the delusion (due to an organic mental syndrome) that he was indeed Napoleon.