The Boy Life of Napoleon | Page 3

at Ajaccio that they are all so
afraid of him?"
"Afraid of him!" exclaimed Eliza indignantly. "Who is afraid of him?
We are not. But, you see, Papa Charles is not rich enough to do for us
what he would like. If he could but have the great estates in this island
which are his by right, he would be rich enough to do everything for us.
But some bad people have taken the land; and even though Papa
Charles is a count, he is not rich enough to send us all to school; so our
uncle, the Canon Lucien, teaches us many lessons. He is not cross, let
me tell you, Panoria; but he is--well, a little severe."
"What, then, does he whip you?" asked Panoria.
"No, he does not; but if he says we should be whipped, then Mamma
Letitia hands us over to Nurse Mina Saveria; and she, I promise you,
does not let us off from the whipping."
All this Eliza admitted as if with vivid recollections of the vigor of
Nurse Saveria's arm.
Panoria glanced toward the grotto amid the rocks.
"Does he--Napoleon--ever get whipped?" she asked.
"Indeed he does not," Eliza grumbled; "or not as often as the rest of us,"
she added. "And when he is whipped he does not even cry. You should
hear Joseph, though. Joseph is the boy to cry; and so is Lucien. I'd be
ashamed to cry as they do. Why, if you touch those boys just with your
little finger, they go running to Mamma Letitia, crying that we've
scratched the skin off."
Panoria had her idea of such "cry-babies" of boys; but Napoleon
interested her most.

"But, Eliza," she said, "what does he say--Napoleon--when he talks to
himself in his grotto over there?"
"You shall hear," Eliza replied. "Let me go and peep in, to see if he is
there. But no; hush! See, here he comes! Come; we will hide behind the
lilac-bush, and hear what Napoleon says."
"But will not your nurse, Saveria, come to look for us?" asked Panoria,
who had not forgotten Eliza's reference to the nurse's heavy hand.
"Why, no; Saveria will be busy for an hour yet, picking fruit for our
table from my uncle the canon's garden. We have time," Eliza
explained.
So the two little girls hid themselves behind the lilac-bushes that grew
beside the rocks in which was the little cave which they called
Napoleon's grotto. The bush concealed them from view; two pairs of
wideopen black eyes peering curiously between the lilac-leaves were
the only signs of the mischievous young eavesdroppers.
The boy who was walking thoughtfully toward the grotto did not notice
the little girls. He was about seven years old. In fact, he was seven that
very day. For he was born in the big, bare house in Ajaccio, which was
his home, on the fifteenth of August, 1776.
He was an odd-looking boy. He was almost elf-like in appearance. His
head was big, his body small, his arms and legs were thin and spindling.
His long, dark hair fell about his face; his dress was careless and
disordered; his stockings had tumbled down over his shoes, and he
looked much like an untidy boy. But one scarcely noticed the dress of
this boy. It was his face that held the attention.
It was an Italian face; for this boy's ancestors had come, not so many
generations before, from the Tuscan town of Sarzana, on the Gulf of
Genoa--the very town from which "the brave Lord of Luna," of whom
you may read in Macaulay's splendid poem of "Horatius," came to the
sack of Rome. Save for his odd appearance, with his big head and his
little body, there was nothing to particularly distinguish the boy

Napoleon Bonaparte from other children of his own age.
Now and then, indeed, his face would show all the shifting emotions of
ambition, passion, and determination; and his eyes, though not
beautiful, had in them a piercing and commanding gleam that, with a
glance, could influence and attract his companions.
Whatever happened, these wonderful eyes--even in the boy--never lost
the power of control which they gave to their owner over those about
him. With a look through those eyes, Napoleon would appear to
conceal his own thoughts and learn those of others. They could flash in
anger if need be, or smile in approval; but, before their fixed and
piercing glance, even the boldest and most inquisitive of other eyes
lowered their lids.
Of course this eye-power, as we might call it, grew as the boy grew; but
even as a little fellow in his Corsican home, this attraction asserted
itself, as many a playfellow and foeman could testify, from Joey Fesch,
his boy-uncle, to whom he was much attached,