I came across this quotation while doing an anacrostic in a puzzle magazine:
“When…Bonaparte…met Josephine, she was thirty-two…. Her…grace, her clothes, her house…almost instantly subdued the rather raw young man, her junior by six years…and…they were married. On the certificate of marriage, he added two years to his age and she subtracted three from hers.”
[J. Christopher Herold, Bonaparte in Egypt, Harper & Row, 1962, p.202]
I’m sure that I have several ancestors who did this – it would certainly explain the “off” ages that I’ve found on a few records!
