The Boy Life of Napoleon | Page 6

French power, took the oath of allegiance, and became a French citizen. And thus it came to pass that little Napoleon Bonaparte, though an Italian by blood and family, was really by birth a French citizen.
Still, all that did not help him much, if, indeed, he thought anything about it as he stood in his grotto looking out to sea. He was thinking of other things,--of how he would like to be great and strong and rich, so that he could be a leader of other boys, rather than be teased by them; for little Napoleon Bonaparte did not take kindly to being teased, but would get very angry at his tormentors, and would bite and scratch and fight like any little savage. He had, as a child, what is known as an ungovernable temper, although he was able to keep it under control until the moment came when he could both say and do to his own satisfaction. He loved his father and mother; he loved his brothers and sisters; he loved his uncle, the Canon Lucien; he loved, more than all his other playmates and companions, his boy-uncle, fat, twelve-year-old Joey Fesch, who had taught him his letters, and been his admirer and follower from babyhood.
But though he loved them all, he loved his own way best; and he was bound to have it, however much his father might talk, his mother chide, or his uncle the canon correct him. So, as he stood in the grotto, remembering that on that day he was seven years old, he determined to let all his family see that he knew what he wished to become and do. He would show them, he declared, that he was a little boy, a baby, no longer; they should know that he was a boy who would be a man long before other boys grew up, and would then show his family that they had never really understood him.
At last he turned away and walked slowly toward home. The Bonaparte house was, as I have told you, a big, bare, four-story, yellow-gray house. It stood on a little narrow street, now called, after Napoleon's mother, Letitia Place, in the town of Ajaccio. The street was not over eight or ten feet wide; but opposite to the house was a little park that allowed the Bonapartes to get both light and air--something that would otherwise be hard to obtain in a street only ten feet wide.
Tired and thirsty from his walk through the sunshine of the hot August afternoon, the boy started for the dining-room for a drink of water. As he opened the door in his quick, impetuous way, he heard a noise as of some one startled and fleeing. The swinging sash of the long French window opposite him shut with a bang, and Napoleon had a glimpse of a bit of white skirt, caught for an instant on the window-fastening.
"Ah, ha! it was not a bird, then, that fluttering," he said. "It was a girl. One of my sisters. Now, which one, I wonder? and why did she run? I do not care to catch her. It is no sport playing with girls."
So little curiosity did he have in the matter, that he did not follow on the track of the fugitive, nor even go to the window to look out; but, walking up to the sideboard, he opened it to take the water-pitcher and get a drink.
As he did so, he started. There stood the basket of fruit which Saveria had filled so carefully with fruit for his uncle the canon. But now the basket was only half filled. Who had taken the fruit?
He clapped his hands together in surprise; for the fruit of his uncle the canon was something no one in the house dared to touch. Punishment swift and sure would descend upon the culprit.
"But, look!" he said half-aloud; "who has dared to touch the fruit of my uncle the canon? Touch it? My faith! they have taken half of it. Ah, that skirt! Could it have been--it must have been one of my sisters. But which one?"
As he stood thus wondering, his eyes still fixed upon the rifled basket of fruit, he heard behind him a voice that tried to be harsh and stern, calling his name.
"Napoleon!" cried the new-comer, "what are you doing at the sideboard? and why have you opened it? You know we have forbidden you to take anything to eat before mealtime. What have you done?"
It was the voice of his uncle, the Canon Lucien. Napoleon, turning at the question, met the glance of his uncle fastened upon him. The Canon Lucien Bonaparte was a funny looking, fat little man, as bald as he was good-natured,--and that was very bald,--and with a smooth, ordinary-appearing