to his uncle's laughing demand. But, for all the fun of the remark,
there was yet a strong groundwork of belief beneath this assertion of
the Canon Lucien Bonaparte; the old man was a shrewd observer. His
friendship for the little Napoleon was strong. And in spite of all
the boy's faults,--his temper, his ambition, his sullenness, his
carelessness, and his selfishness,--Uncle Lucien still recognized in
this nine-year-old nephew an ability that would carry him forward as he
grew older.
"Napoleon has his faults," he said, in talking over family matters
with Mamma Letitia and Papa Charles the night before the departure for
France; "the boy is not perfect--what child is? But those very faults
will grow into action as he becomes acquainted with the world. I expect
great things of the boy; and mark my words, Letitia and Charles, it is
of no use for you to think on Napoleon's fortune or his future. He will
make them for himself, and you will look to him for assistance, rather
than he to you. Joseph is the eldest son; but, of this I am sure,
Napoleon will be the head of this family. Remember what I say; for,
though I may not live to see it, some of you will--and will profit by
it."
They were all on the dock as the vessel sailed away, bearing Papa
Charles, Uncle Joey Fesch, and the two Bonaparte boys, from Ajaccio to
Florence.
Mamma Letitia was there, tearful, but smiling, with Eliza, and Pauline,
and Baby Lucien; so were Uncle Lucien the canon, and Aunt Manuccia,
who had been their mother's housekeeper, with Nurse Saveria, and Nurse
Ilaria, whom Napoleon called foster-mother, and even little Panoria, to
whom Napoleon cried "Good-by, Giacommeta mia! I'll come back some day."
Then the vessel moved out into the harbor, and sailed away for Italy,
while the tearful group on the dock and the tearful group on the deck
threw kisses to one another until they could no longer make out faces or
forms.
The home tie was broken; and Napoleon Bonaparte, a boy of nine and a
half years, was launched upon life--a life the world was never to
forget.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
AT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL.
The Bonaparte boys and their father stopped a while in Florence, so that
Charles Bonaparte could procure the proper papers to prove that he was
of what is called noble birth. For it seems that only the children of
nobles could enter the French military school at Brienne.
He procured these at last, and also a letter of introduction to the
French queen, Marie Antoinette whose sad story you all know so well.
Then they set out for Autun, and reached that quaint old town on the
last day of the year 1778. On New Year's Day, 1779, Napoleon was entered
as a pupil in the preparatory school at Autun.
Autun has been a school town tor hundreds of years. The old Druids had a
school there, and so did the Romans. It is one of the oldest of French
towns; and you will find it on your map of France, about one hundred and
fifty miles south-east of Paris. It is a picturesque old town, placed
on a sloping hillside, that runs down to the Arroux River. There is
a cathedral in the town over nine hundred years old; and there, too,
Napoleon found a college and a seminary, a museum and a library, with
plenty of ruins, walls, and gateways, and such things, that told of its
great age and old-time grandeur.
It was a fine place in which to go to school, and the Bonaparte boys
must have found it quite a change from their Corsican home. The bishop
of Autun, who had charge of the cathedral and the schools, was the
nephew of a friend of Charles Bonaparte, and he promised to look after
the boys.
Napoleon did not stay long in the school at Autun. His father went to
Paris to enter upon his duties as delegate to the Assembly, intending,
while there, to make arrangements for getting Napoleon into the military
school at Brienne.
But there was much need of the preparatory work at Autun. For you must
know that, being a Corsican, Napoleon knew scarcely a word of French.
The Corsicans speak Italian, and this would never do for a French
schoolboy. So, for three months, Napoleon was drilled in French.
He did not take kindly to it. But he did his best. For, you see, his
journey from Florence to Marseilles, and on to Autun, had opened his
eyes. He saw, for the first time, cities larger than Ajaccio, and
learned that there were other places in the world besides Corsica.
But he never really lost his Ajaccio tongue, and for most of his life he
talked French with an Italian accent.
It was a queer-looking little Italian boy who was thus studying French
at Autun school. You would scarcely have looked at him twice; for his
figure was small, his appearance insignificant, his face sober and
solemn, his hair stiff and stringy, and his complexion sallow. The boys
made fun of the way in which he talked, as boys are apt to make sport of
those who do not talk as they do.
"What is your name, new boy?" the big boy of Autun school called out to
Napoleon, as on that first day of the new year, which was, as I have
said, his first day at school, the Bonaparte brothers wandered about the
schoolyard, strangers and shy.
"Na-polle-o-nay!" answered the little new-comer, giving the Corsican
pronunciation to his name of Napoleon.
"Oho! so!" cried the big boy, mimicking him. "Na-pailli-au-nez, is it?
See, fellows, see! this is Mr. Straw-Nose!"
For, you see, the way Napoleon pronounced his name sounded very much
like the French words that mean "the nose of straw." That, of course,
gave the boys at the school a rare chance to nickname; and so poor
Napoleon was called "Mr. Straw-Nose" all the time he was at that school.
This was not very long, however; for in three months he had made
sufficient progress in his study of French to permit him to pass into
the military school at Brienne, into which his father was at last able
to procure his admission.
But, while he was at Autun, Napoleon seems to have been a favorite with
his teachers. One of them, the Abbé Chardon, spoke of him as "a sober,
thoughtful child." He wished very much to get into the military school;
so he worked hard, learned quickly, and was proud of what he called his
ability.
But when the boys tried to plague him, or to twit him for being a
Corsican, the boy was ready enough to talk back.
The French boys knew but little about Corsica, and had a certain
contempt for the little island which, so they declared, was the home of
robbers, and which France had one day gone across and conquered.
"Bah, Corsican!" one of the big boys called out to the new scholar, "and
what is Corsica? Just an island of cowards. Just see how we Frenchmen
whipped you out of your boots!"
Napoleon clinched his little fist, and turned hotly on his tormentor.
But he was already learning the lesson of self-control.
"And how did you do it, Frenchman?" he replied. "By numbers. If you had
been but four to one against us, you would never have conquered us. But,
behold! you were ten to one! That is too much to struggle against."
"And yet you boast of your general--your leader," said the other boy.
"You say he is a fine commander--this--how do you call him?--this
Paoli."
"I say so; yes, sir," Napoleon replied sadly. Then, as if his ambition
led him on, he added, "I would like to be like him. What could I not do
then!"
This feeling of being a Corsican, an outsider at the school, made the
boy quiet and retiring. He kept by himself, just as he had at home when
things did not suit him; he walked out alone, and played with no one. To
be sure, he was more or less with his brother Joseph, who loved his
ease and comfort, did not fire up when the other boys teased him, and
smoothed over many a quarrel between them and his brother.
Napoleon would often find fault with Joseph's lack of spirit, as he
called it; but Joseph, all through life, liked to take things easy, and
hated to face trouble. Most of us do, you know; but it was the readiness
of Napoleon to boldly face danger, and to attempt what appeared to be
the impossible, that made him the self-reliant boy, the successful man,
the conqueror, the emperor, the hero.
CHAPTER NINE
THE LONELY SCHOOL-BOY
While Napoleon was at Autun school, studying French, and preparing for
entrance into the military academy, his father, Charles Bonaparte, was
at Versailles, trying to get a little more money from the king, in
return for his services as Corsica's delegate to France.
At the same time he was working to complete the arrangements which
should permit him to enter Napoleon at the military school, at the
expense of the state. This he finally accomplished; and on the
twenty-third of April, in the year 1779, Napoleon entered the royal
military school at Brienne.
There were ten of these military schools in France. They were started
as training-schools for boys who were to become officers in the French
army. The one at Brienne was a bare and ugly-looking lot of buildings
in the midst of trees and gardens, looking down toward the little River
Aube, and near to the fine old chateau, or nobleman's house, built, a
hundred years before Napoleon's day, by the last Count of Brienne.
There were a hundred and fifty boys at Brienne school, although there
was scarcely room enough for a hundred and twenty.
The new-comer was therefore crowded in with the others; and you may be
sure that the old boys did not make life pleasant and easy for the new
boy.
Although he had learned to write and speak French during his three
months' schooling at Autun, he could not, of course, speak it very well;
so the boys plagued him for that. And when he told them his name,
they, too, made fun of his pronunciation of Na-po-le-one, and at once
nicknamed him, "straw-nose," just as the Autun boys had done.
Most of the boys who attended Brienne school were the sons of French
noblemen. They had plenty of money to spend; they made a show of it, and
dressed and did things as finely as they could. Napoleon, you know, was
poor. His father had scrimped and begged and borrowed to send his boys
to school. He could not, therefore, give them much for themselves; so
the French boys, with the money to spend and the manners to show, made
no end of fun of the little Corsican, who had neither money nor manners.
At once he got into trouble. He did not like, nor did he understand, the
ways of the French boys; he was alone; he was homesick; and naturally he
became sulky and uncompanionable. When the boys teased him, he tossed
back a wrathful answer; when they made fun of his appearance, he grew
angry and sullen; and when they tried to force him into their society,
he went off by himself, and acted like a little hermit.
But when they twitted him on his nationality, called him "Straw-nose,
the Corsican," and made all manner of fun of that rocky and (as they
called it) savage island, then all the patriotism in the boy's nature
was aroused, and he called his tormentors French cowards, with whom he
would one day get square.
"Bah, Corsican! and what will you do?" asked Peter Bouquet. "I hope some
day to give Corsica her liberty," said Napoleon; "and then all Frenchmen
shall march into the sea."
Upon which all the boys laughed loudly; and Napoleon, walking off in
disgust, went into the school-building, and there vented his wrath upon
a portrait of Choiseul, that hung upon the wall.
"Ah, ha! blackguard, pawnbroker, traitor!" he cried, shaking his fist at
this portrait of a stout and smiling-looking gentleman. "I loathe you! I
despise you! I spit upon you!" And he did.
Now, Monsieur the Count de Choiseul was the French nobleman who was
one of the old King Louis's ministers and advisers. It was he who had
planned the conquest of Corsica, and annexed it to France. You may not
wonder, then, that the little Corsican, homesick for his native island,
and hot with rage toward those who made fun of it, when he came upon
this portrait of the man to whom, as he had been taught, all Corsica's
troubles were due, should have vented his wrath upon it, and heaped
insults upon it.
[Illustration: "_What' you will not ask Monsieur the Count's pardon?"_]
Unfortunately for him, however, the teachers at Brienne did not
appreciate his patriotic wrath; so, when one of the tattle-tales
reported Napoleon's actions, at once he was pounced upon, and ordered to
ask pardon for what he had said and done, standing before the portrait
of Corsica's enslaver.
He approached the portrait so reluctantly and contemptuously, that one
of the teachers scolded him sharply.
"You are not worthy to be a French officer, foolish boy," the teacher
declared; "you are no true son of France, thus to insult so great and
noble a Frenchman as Monsieur the Count de Choiseul."
"I am a son of Corsica," Napoleon replied proudly; "that noble country
which this man ground in the dust."
"As well he might," replied the teacher tauntingly. "He was Corsica's
best friend. He was worth a thousand Paoli's."
"It is not so!" cried Napoleon, hot with patriotic indignation. "You
talk like all Frenchmen. Paoli was a great man. He loved his country.
I admire him. I wish to be like him. I can never forgive my father for
having been willing to desert the cause of Corsica, and agree to its
union with France. He should have followed Paoli's lead, even though it
took him with Paoli, into exile in England."
"Bah! your father!" one of the big boys standing by exclaimed; "and who
is your father, Straw-nose?"
Napoleon turned upon his tormentor; "a better man than you, Frenchman!"
he cried; "a better man than this Choiseul here. My father is a
Corsican."
"A stubborn rebel, this boy," said the teacher, now losing his temper.
"What! you will not ask Monsieur the Count's pardon, as a rebel should?
Then will we tame your spirit. Is a little arrogant Corsican to defy all
France, and Brienne school besides? Go, sir! We will devise some
fine punishment for you, that shall well repay your insolence and
disobedience."
So Napoleon, in disgrace, left the schoolroom, and pacing down his
favorite walk, the pleasant avenue of chestnut-trees that lined the
path from one of the schoolhouse doors, he sought his one retreat and
hermitage,--his loved and bravely defended garden.
That garden was a regular Napoleonic idea. I must tell you about it.
CHAPTER TEN.
IN NAPOLEON'S GARDEN.
One of the rules of Brienne school was that each pupil should know
something about agriculture. To illustrate this study, each one of the
one hundred and fifty boys had a little garden-spot set aside for him to
cultivate and keep in order.
Some of the boys did this from choice, and because they loved to watch
things grow; but many of them were careless, and had no love for fruit
or flowers; so while some of the garden-plots were well kept, others
were neglected.
Napoleon was glad of this garden-plot, for it gave him something which
he could call his own. He cared for it faithfully; but he wished to make
it even more secluded. He remembered his dear grotto at Ajaccio, and
studied over a plan to make his garden-plot just such a real retreat.
But it was not large enough for this. He looked about him. The boys to
whom belonged the garden-plots on either side of him were careless and
neglectful. Their gardens received no attention; they were overgrown
with weeds; their hedges were full of gaps and holes.
"I will take them," said Napoleon; "what one cannot care for, another
must."
So the boy went systematically to work to "annex" his neighbors'
kingdoms, and make from the three plots one ample retreat for himself.
He cut down the separating borders; he trimmed and trained and filled
in the stout outside hedge, until it completely surrounded his enlarged
domain; and, in the centre of the paths and flower-beds and hedges, he
put up a seat and a little summer-bower for his pleasure and protection.
It took some time to get this into shape, of course. When he had
completed it, and was beginning to enjoy it, the owners of the plots
he had confiscated awoke to a sense of their loss and the excellent
garden-spot this young Corsican had made for them. "For of course," they
said, "the garden-plots are ours. Straw Nose has improved them at his
own risk. What he has made we will keep for our own pleasure." So they
attempted to occupy their property; but with Napoleon there was force in
the old saying, "Possession is nine points of the law."
When the dispossessed boys demanded their property, he refused it; when
they spoke of their rights, he laughed at them; and when they attempted
to enter the garden by force, he fell upon them, drove them flying from
the field, and pommelled them so soundly that they judged discretion to
be the better part of valor, and made no further attempt to disturb the
conqueror.
The other boys did attempt it, however, simply to tease and annoy the
fiery Corsican. But it always resulted in their own damage; for Napoleon
become so attached to his garden citadel, that he would grow furiously
angry whenever he was disturbed. Rushing out, he would rout his
assailants completely; until at last it was understood that it was
safest to let him alone.
As he sought his garden on this day of disgrace to which I have
referred, he was full of bitter thoughts against the unfriendly boys and
the unsympathetic teachers amid whom his lot was cast. Like most boys,
he determined to do something that should free him from this tyranny;
then, like many boys, he decided to run away. Where or how he could go
he did not know; for he had no friends in France who would help him
along, and he had no money in his pocket to enable him to help himself.
"I will run away to sea," he said. For the sea, you know, is the first
thought of boys who determine to be runaways.
But Napoleon had a strong love for his family; he held high notions
in regard to the honor of the family name; above all else, he was
determined to do something that should help his family out of its sore
straits, and become one element of its support.
"If I should run away to sea," he thought, "I should bring discredit and
shame to my family: I should annoy my father, and seriously interfere
with my own plans. For, should I run away from Brienne, my father, who
has been at such pains to place me here, would be distressed, and
perhaps injured. No; I will brave it out. But I will write to my father,
asking him to take me away, and place me in some school where I shall
feel less like an outcast, where poverty would not be held as a crime,
and where I shall have more agreeable surroundings. So he went into his
garden fortress; he stretched himself at full length on his bench, and,
using the cover of his favorite book, Plutarch's "Lives," as a desk, he
wrote this letter to his father:--
[Illustration: _Napoleon writing to his father_.]
"MY FATHER,--If you or my protectors cannot give me the means of
sustaining myself more honorably in the house where I am, please summon
me home, and as soon as possible. I am tired of poverty, and of the
smiles of the insolent scholars who are superior to me only in their
fortune; for there is not one among them who feels one-hundredth part
of the noble sentiments by which I am animated. Must your son, sir,
continually be the butt of these boobies, who, vain of the luxuries
which they enjoy, insult me with their laughter at the privations I am
forced to endure? No, father; No! If fortune refuses to smile upon me,
take me from Brienne, and make me, if you will, a mechanic. From these
words you may judge of my despair. This letter, sir, please believe, is
not dictated by a vain desire to enjoy expensive amusements. I have no
such wish. I feel simply that it is necessary to show my companions that
I can procure them as well as they, if I wish to do so.
"Your respectful and affectionate son,
"BONAPARTE."
It took some time to write this letter; for, with Napoleon,
letter-writing was always a detested task.
When he had written and directed it, he felt better. We always do feel
relieved, you know, if we speak out or write down our feelings. Then he
read a chapter in Plutarch about Alexander the Great. This set him to
thinking and planning how he would win a battle if he should ever become
a leader and commander. He had a notion that he knew just what he would
do; and, to prove that his plan was good, he threw himself on the garden
walk, and gathering a lot of pebbles, he began to set them in array,
as if they were soldiers, and to make all the moves and marches and
counter-marches of a furious battle. He indicated the generals and chief
officers in this army of stone by the larger pebbles; and you may be
sure that the largest pebble of all represented the commander-in-chief
--and that was Napoleon himself.
As he marshalled his pebble army, under the lead of his generals and
officers, shifting some, advancing others, rearranging certain of them
in squares, and massing others as if to resist an attack, Napoleon was
conscious of a snickering sort of laugh from somewhere above him.
He looked up, and caught sight of a mocking face looking down at him
from the top of the hedge that bordered his garden.
"Ho, ho! Straw-nose!" the spy cried out; "and what is the baby doing?
Is it playing with the pretty pebbles? Is it making mud-pies? It was a
sweet child, so it was."
Napoleon flushed with anger, enraged both at the intrusion and the
teasing.
"Pig! imbecile!" he cried; "get down from my hedge, or I will make you!"
"Ho! hear the infant!" came back the taunting answer. "He will make
me--this pretty Corsican baby who plays with pebbles. He will make me!
That is good! I laugh; I--Oh, help! help! the Corsican has killed me!"
[Illustration: "_'Get down from my hedge' cried Napoleon_"]
For a moment Napoleon thought indeed he had; for a moment, too, I am
afraid, he did not care. For so enraged was he at the boy's insults and
actions, that he had caught up his biggest pebble, which happened to
be Napoleon the general, and flung it at the intruder. It struck him
squarely between the eyes, and so stunned him that he fell back from the
hedge, and lay, first howling, and then terribly quiet, in the space
outside Napoleon's garden. At once there was a hue and cry; Napoleon was
summoned from his retreat, and dragged before his teacher.
"Ah, miserable one!" cried the master. "And is it you again? You have
perhaps killed your fellow-student. You will yet end in the Bastille, or
on the block. Take him away, until we see what shall be the result of
the last ill-doing of this wicked one."
"When one plays the spy and the bully one must expect retribution," said
Napoleon loftily. "This Bouquet is a rascal who will be more likely to
end in the Bastille than I, who did but defend my own."
This language, of course, did not help matters; so into the school-cage,
or punishment "lock-up" for the school-boy offenders, young Napoleon was
at once hurried, without an opportunity for explanation or protest.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
FRIENDS AND FOES.
Napoleon, the prisoner in the school "lock-up," raged for a while like
a caged lion. Then he calmed down into the sulks, returned to his
determination to run away, concluded again that he would go to sea,
thought of his family and his duties once more, and at last concluded to
take his punishment without a word, though he knew that the boy who had
mocked him into anger deserved the punishment fully as much as did he
who had been the insulted one.
"But then," he reasoned, "he paid well for his taunts and teasing. I
wonder how he is now?"
His schoolmate, the English boy, Lawley, was on duty outside the
"lock-up" door, as a sort of monitor.
"Say, you Lawley!" Napoleon called out, "and how is that brute of a
Bouquet?"
"None the better for seeing you, little one," replied the good-natured
English boy, who had that love of fair play that is supposed to belong
to all Englishmen, and, therefore, felt that young Bonaparte was
suffering unjustly. Then he added:
"Bouquet will no doubt die, and then what will you do?"
"I will plead self-defence, my friend," said Napoleon. "Did not you tell
me that an English judge did once declare that a man's home was his
castle, which he was pledged to defend from invasion and assault. What
else is my garden? That brute of a Bouquet came spying about my castle,
and I did but defend myself. Is it not so?"
"It may be so to you, young Bonaparte," Lawley replied; "but not to your
judges. No, little one, you're in for it now; they'll make you smart for
this, whatever happens to old Bouquet."
For, like all English boys, this young Lawley mingled with his love of
justice an equal love for teasing: and like most of the boys at Brienne
school, he declared it to be "great fun to get the little Corsican mad."