The waxwork model of King Charles III at Madame Tussaud's in London was smeared with two chocolate cakes. It seems like the cakes were store-bought, given the square pieces of cardboard they were attached to. They looked like pretty tasty cakes, nevertheless!
I became curious about Madame Tussaud after watching this video. Wikipedia says she was French, and lived from 1761-1850. When she was 27 years old, she was suspected of being a royal sympathizer, and was arrested during the Reign of Terror:
Her head was shaved in preparation for her execution by guillotine. She said she was released thanks to Collot d'Herbois' support for Curtius and his household. Tussaud said she was then employed to make death masks and whole-body casts of the revolution's famous victims, including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Princesse de Lamballe, Marat, and Robespierre.
Her memoirs are available at the Internet Archive. From the preface:
Madame Tussaud, though educated as a professional artist, was for several years the companion of the unfortunate Elizabeth, sister to Louis XVI. She had apartments within the Palace of Versailles, where the most magnificent court of Europe was held. She was with the royal family when Marie Antoinette astonished the world with the splendour of her assemblies and the sumptuousness of her banquets; she wept over the king and queen, the royal princes and princesses, in the dungeons. She saw some of them on their way to execution, and she herself was a prisoner in the same dungeon as Josephine, afterwards the wife of Napoleon I.
It may be thought that Madame Tussaud's attachment to the royal family after experiencing their protection and kindness, would render her testimony of a partial nature; but after quitting the palace she came into close association with Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Necker, Duc d'Orléans, Mirabeau, Robespierre, &c., which produced a counteraction in her mind, and served to modify her feelings on the subject.
Here's a bit about her father:
Joseph Gresholtz had been aide-de-camp to General Wurmser, with whom he had served during the Seven Years' War, and was so mutilated with wounds that his forehead was laid bare, and his lower jaw having been shot away, its place had to be supplied by a silver plate. He was, however, a hero and highly esteemed, and the widow, Marie Walter, accepted him as her second husband, the ceremony of their marriage being witnessed by all the élite in Berne. M. Gresholtz did not long sur-vive the union; he died in 1760, and two months after his death little Marie was born, the lady who afterwards became Madame Tussaud.
What a life!
