little brother.
One morning, after Napoleon had dressed himself and was preparing their
poor breakfast, he knocked on the floor with his cane to arouse his
brother and call him to breakfast and studies.
Little Louis awoke so slowly that Napoleon was obliged to arouse him a
second time.
"Come, come, my Louis," he cried; "what is the matter this morning? It
seems to me that you are very lazy."
"Oh, brother!" answered the half-awaked child, "I was having such a
beautiful dream!"
"And what did you dream?" asked Napoleon.
The little Louis sat upright on the edge of his cot. "I dreamed that I
was a king," he replied.
"A king! Well, well!" exclaimed his brother, laughing. Then he glanced
around at the bare and poverty-stricken room. "And what, then, your
Majesty, was I, your brother,--an emperor perhaps?" Then he shrugged his
shoulders, and pinched his brother's ear.
"Well, kings and emperors must eat and work," he said, "the same as
lieutenants and schoolboys. Come, then, King Louis; some broth, and then
to your duty."
This was Napoleon at twenty,--a poverty-pinched, self-sacrificing,
hard-working boy, a man before his time; knowing very little of fun and
comfort, and very much of toil and trouble.
He was an ill-proportioned young man, not yet having outgrown the
"spindling" appearance of his boyhood, but even then he possessed
certain of the remarkable features familiar to every boy and girl who
has studied the portraits of Napoleon the emperor. His head was large
and finely shaped, with a wide forehead, large mouth, and straight nose,
a projecting chin, and large, steel-blue eyes, that were full of fire
and power. His face was sallow, his hair brown and stringy, his cheeks
lean from not too much over-feeding. His body and lees were thin and
small, but his chest was broad, and his neck short and thick. His step
was firm and steady, with nothing of the "wobbly" gait we often see in
people who are not well-proportioned. His character was undoubtedly that
of a young man who had the desire to get ahead faster than his
opportunities would permit. Solitude had made him uncommunicative and
secretive; anxiety and privation had made him self-helpful and
self-reliant; lack of sympathy had made him calculating; but doing for
others had made him kind-hearted and generous. His reading and study had
made him ambitious; his knowledge that when he knew a thing he really
knew it, made him masterful and desirous of leadership. He had few of
the vices, and sowed but a small crop of what is called the "wild oats"
of youth; he abhorred debt, and scarcely ever owed a penny, even when in
sorest straits; and, while not a bright nor a great scholar, what he had
learned he was able to store away in his brain, to be drawn upon for use
when, in later years, this knowledge could be used to advantage.
[Illustration: _Lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte Aged 22 (from the
portrait by Jean Baptiste Greuse, in the Museum at
Versailles)_]
Such at twenty years of age was Napoleon Bonaparte. Such he remained
through the years of his young manhood, meeting all sorts of
discouragements, facing the hardest poverty, becoming disgusted with
many things that occurred in those changing days, when liberty was
replacing tyranny, and the lesson of free America was being read and
committed by the world.
He saw the turmoil and terrors of the French Revolution--that season of
blood, when a long-suffering people struck a blow at tyranny, murdered
their king, and tried to build on the ruins of an overturned kingdom an
impossible republic.
You will understand all this better when you come to read the history of
France, and see through how many noble but mistaken efforts that fair
European land struggled from tyranny to freedom. In these efforts
Napoleon had a share; and it was his boyhood of privation and his youth
of discouragement that made him a man of purpose, of persistence and
endeavor, raising him step by step, in the days when men needed leaders
but found none, until this one finally proved himself a leader indeed,
and, grasping the reins of command, advanced steadily from the barracks
to a throne. All this is history; it is the story of the development and
progress of the most remarkable man of modern times. You can read the
story in countless books; for now, after Napoleon has been dead for over
seventy years, the world is learning to sift the truth from all the
chaff of falsehood and fable that so long surrounded him; it is
endeavoring to place this marvellous leader of men in the place he
should rightly occupy--that of a great man, led by ambition and swayed
by selfishness, but moved also by a desire to do noble things for the
nation that he had raised to greatness, and the men who looked to him
for guidance and direction.
Our story of his boyhood ends here. For years after he came to young
manhood fate seemed against him, and privation held him down. But he
broke loose from all entanglements; he surmounted all obstacles; he
conquered all adverse circumstances. He rose to power by his own
abilities. He led the armies of France to marvellous victories. He
became the idol of his soldiers, the hero of the people, the chief man
in the nation, the controlling power in Europe; and on the second of
December, in the year 1804, he was crowned in the great church of
Notre Dame, in Paris, Emperor of the French. "Straw-nose," the
poverty-stricken little Corsican, had become the foremost man in all the
world!
But through all his marvellous career he never forgot his family. The
same love and devotion that he bestowed upon them when a poor boy and
a struggling lieutenant, he lavished upon them as general, consul,
and emperor. Indeed, to them was due, to a certain extent, his later
misfortunes, and his fall from power. The more generous he became, the
more selfish did his brothers and sisters grow. For their interests he
neglected his own safety and the welfare of France. His unselfishness
was, indeed, his greatest selfishness; and the boy who uncomplainingly
took his sister's punishment for the theft of the basket of fruit,
stood also as the scapegoat for all the mistakes and stupidities and
wrong-doings that were due to his self-seeking brothers and sisters, the
Bonaparte children of Ajaccio in Corsica.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS' HOME.
The Emperor Napoleon had long been dead. A wasting disease and English
indignities had worn his life away upon his prison-rock of St. Helena;
and, after many years, his body had been brought back to France, and
placed beneath a mighty monument in the splendid Home for Invalid
Soldiers, in the beautiful city of Paris which he had loved so much, and
where his days of greatness and power had been spent.
There, beneath the dome, surrounded by all the life and brilliancy of
the great city, he rests. His last wish has been gratified--the wish he
expressed in the will he wrote on his prison-rock, so many miles away:
"I desire that my ashes shall rest by the banks of the Seine, in the
midst of the French people I have loved so well."
That Home for Invalid Soldiers, in which now stands the tomb of
Napoleon, has long been, as its name implies, a home for the maimed and
aged veterans who have fought in the armies of France, and received as
their portion, wounds, illness,--and glory.
The sun shines brightly upon the walls of the great home; and the
war-worn veterans dearly love to bask in its life-giving rays, or to
rest in the shade of its towering walls.
It was on a certain morning, many years ago, that I who write these
lines--Eugenie Foa, friend to all the boys and girls who love to read of
glorious and heroic deeds--was resting upon one of the seats near to the
shade-giving walls of the Soldiers' Home. As I sat there, several of
the old soldiers placed themselves on the adjoining seat. There were a
half-dozen of them--all veterans, grizzled and gray, and ranging from
the young veteran of fifty to the patriarch of ninety years.
As is always the case with these scarred old fellows, their talk
speedily turned upon the feats at arms at which they had assisted.
And this dialogue was so enlivening, so picturesque, so full of the
hero-spirit that lingers ever about the walls of that noble building
which is a hero's resting-place, that I gladly listened to their talk,
and try now to repeat it to you.
"But those Egyptians whom Father Nonesuch, here, helped to conquer," one
old fellow said,--"ah, they were great story-tellers! I have read of
some of them in a mightily fine book. It was called the 'Tales of the
Thousand and One Nights.'"
"Bah!" cried the eldest of the group. "Bah! I say. Your 'Thousand and
One Nights,' your fairy stories, all the wonders of nature,"--here he
waved his trembling old hand excitedly,--"all these are but as nothing
compared with what I have seen."
"Hear him!" exclaimed the young fellow of fifty; "hear old Father
Nonesuch, will you, comrades? He thinks, because he has seen the
republic, the consulate, the empire, the hundred days, the kingdom"--
"And is not that enough, youngster?" interrupted the old veteran they
called Father Nonesuch.[1]
[1] Perhaps the correct rendering of this nickname would be
"The Remnant," and it applies to the battered veteran even
better than "Nonesuch."]
He certainly merited the nickname given him by his comrades; for I saw,
by glancing at him, that the old veteran had but one leg, one arm, and
one eye.
"Enough?" echoed the one called "the youngster," whose grizzled locks
showed him to be at least fifty years old, "Enough? Well, perhaps--for
you. But, my faith! I cannot see that they were finer than the 'Thousand
and one Nights.'"
"Bah!" again cried old Nonesuch contemptuously; "but those were fairy
stories, I tell you, youngster,--untrue stories,--pagan stories.
But when one can tell, as can I, of stories that are true,--of
history--history this--history that--true histories every one--bah!"
and, shrugging his shoulders, old Nonesuch tapped upon his neighbor's
snuff-box, and, with his only hand, drew out a mighty pinch by way of
emphasis.
"Well, what say thou, Nonesuch,--you and your histories?" persisted the
young admirer of the "Arabian Nights."
"As for me,--my faith! I like only marvellous."
[Illustration: "Beneath the great dome
he rests"--The Hotel des Invalides (The 'Soldiers' Home' in Paris,
containing the Tomb of Napoleon)]
"And I tell you this, youngster," the old veteran cried, while his voice
cracked into a tremble in his excitement, "there is more of the
marvellous in the one little finger of my history than in all the
characters you can crowd together in your 'Thousand and One Nights.'
Bah!--Stephen, boy; light my pipe."
"And what is your history, Father Nonesuch?" demanded "the youngster,"
while two-armed Stephen, a gray old "boy" of seventy, filled and lighted
the old veteran's pipe.
"My history?" cried old Nonesuch, struggling to his feet,--or rather to
his foot,--and removing his hat, "it is, my son, that of the Emperor
Napoleon!"
And at the word, each old soldier sprang also to his feet, and removed
his hat silently and in reverence.
"Why, youngster!" old Father Nonesuch continued, dropping again to the
bench, "if one wished to relate about my emperor a thousand and one
stories a thousand and one nights; to see even a thousand and one days
increased by a thousand and one battles, adding to that a thousand and
one victories, one would have a thousand and a million million things
--fine, glorious, delightful, to hear. For, remember, comrades," and the
old man well-nigh exploded with his mathematical calculation, and the
grandeur of his own recollections, "remember you this: I never left the
great Napoleon!"
"Ah, yes," another aged veteran chimed in; "ah, yes; he was a great
man."
Old Nonesuch clapped his hand to his ear.
"Pardon me, comrade the Corsican," he said, with the air of one who had
not heard aright; "excuse my question, but would you kindly tell me whom
you call a great man?"
"Whom, old deaf ears? Why, the Emperor Napoleon, of course," replied the
Corsican.
Old Nonesuch burst out laughing, and pounded the pavement with his heavy
cane.
"To call the emperor a man!" he exclaimed; "and what, then, will you
call me?"
"You? why, what should we?" said the Corsican veteran; "old Father
Nonesuch, old 'Not Entire,' otherwise, Corporal Francis Haut of
Brienne."
"Ah, bah!" cried the persistent veteran; "I do not mean my name, stupid!
I mean my quality, my--my title, my--well--my sex,--indeed, what am I?"
"Well, what is left of you, I suppose," laughed the Corsican, "we might
call a man."
"A man! there you have it exactly!" cried old Nonesuch. "I am a man; and
so are you, Corsican, and you, Stephen, and you,--almost so,--youngster.
But my emperor--the Emperor Napoleon! was he a man? Away with you! It
was the English who invented that story; they did not know what he was
capable of, those English! The emperor a man? Bah!"
"What was he, then? A woman?" queried the Corsican.
"Ah, stupid one! where are your wits?" cried old Nonesuch, shaking pipe
and cane excitedly. "Are you, then, as dull as those English? Why, the
emperor was--the emperor! It is we, his soldiers, who were men."
The Corsican veteran shook his head musingly.
"It may be so; it may be so, good Nonesuch. I do not say no to you," he
said. "Ah, my dear emperor! I have seen him often. I knew him when he
was small; I knew him when he was grown. I saw him born; I saw him
die"--"Halt there!" cried old Nonesuch; "let me stop you once more,
good comrade Corsican. Do not make these other 'Not Entires' swallow
such impossible and indigestible things. The emperor was never born; the
emperor never died; the emperor has always been; the emperor always will
be. To prove it," he added quickly, holding up his cane, as he saw that
the Corsican was about to protest at this surprising statement, "to
prove it, let me tell you. He fought at Constantine; he fought at St.
Jean d'Ulloa; he fought at Sebastopol, and was conqueror."
"Come, come, Father Nonesuch!" broke in "the youngster," and others
of that group of veterans, "you are surely wandering. It was not the
Emperor Napoleon who fought at those places. That was long after he was
dead. It was the son of Louis Philippe, the Duke of Nemours, who fought
at Constantine; it was the Prince of Joinville who led at Ulloa; and, at
Sebastopol, the"--
[Illustration: "_Pif! paf! pouf! That is the way I
read"--Napoleon at the Battle of Jena. (From the Painting by Horace
Vernet_.)]
"Bah!" broke in the old veteran. "You are all owls, you! What if they
did? I will not deny either the Duke of Nemours nor the Prince of
Joinville, nor Louis Philippe himself. But what then? You need not
deny, you youngster, nor you, the other shouters, that when the cannons
boom, when the battles rage, when, above all, one is conqueror for
France, there is something of my emperor in that. Could they have
conquered except for him? Ten thousand bullets! I say. He is
everywhere."
"But, see here, Father Nonesuch," protested the Corsican, "you must not
deny to me the emperor's birth; for I know, I know all about it. Was not
my mother, Saveria, Madame Letitia's servant? Was she not, too, nurse to
the little Napoleon? She was, my faith! And she has told me a hundred
times all about him. I know of what I speak. Our emperor, Napoleon
Bonaparte, was born on the fifteenth of August, 1769, and when he was
a baby, the cradle not being at hand, he was laid upon a rug in Madame
Letitia's room. And on that rug was a fine representation of Mars, the
god of war. And because his bed on that rug was on the very spot which
represented Mars, that, old Nonesuch, is why our emperor was ever
valiant in war. What say you to that?"
"Oh, very well, very well," said old Nonesuch, as if he made a great
concession; "if you say so from your own knowledge, if you insist that
he was born, let it go so. I admit that he was born. But as to his being
dead, eh? Will you insist on that too?"
"And why not?" replied the Corsican, still harping on his personal
knowledge of things in Ajaccio. "I knew the Bonapartes well, I tell you.
There was the father, Papa Charles, a fine, noble-looking man; and their
uncle, the canon--ah! he was a good man. He was short and fat and bald,
with little eyes, but with a look like an eagle. And the children!
how often I have seen them, though they were older than I--Joseph and
Lucien, and little Louis, and Eliza and Pauline and Caroline. Yes; I saw
them often. And Napoleon too. They say he never played much. But you
knew him at Brienne school, old Nonesuch."
"Yes," nodded the old veteran; "for there my father was the porter."
"He was ever grave and stern, was Napoleon;--not wicked, though"--"No,
no; never wicked," broke in old Nonesuch. "I remember his snow-ball
fight."
"A fight with snow-balls!" exclaimed the youngster. "Yes; with
snow-balls, youngster," replied old None-such.
[Illustration: "'The Emperor was--the Emperor' cried old Nonesuch"]
"Did you never hear of it? But you are too young. Only the Corsican and
I can remember that;" and the old man nodded to the Corsican with the
superiority of old age over these "babies," as he called the younger
veterans. "Let me see," said Nonesuch, crossing his wooden leg over his
leg of flesh; "I was the porter's boy at Brienne school. I was there to
blacken my shoes--not mine, you understand, but those of the scholars.
There was much snow that winter. The scholars could not play in the
courts nor out-of-doors. They were forced to walk in the halls. That
wearied them, but it rejoiced me. Why? Because I had but few shoes to
blacken. They could not get them dirty while they remained indoors. But,
look you! one day at recess I saw the scholars all out-of-doors,--all
out in the snow. 'Alas! alas! my poor shoes,' said I. It made me sad. I
hid behind the greenhouse doors, to see the meaning of this disorder.
Then I heard a sudden shout. 'Brooms, brooms! shovels, shovels!' they
cried. They rushed into the greenhouse: they took whatever they could
find; and one boy, who saw me standing idle, pushed me toward the door,
crying, 'Here, lazy-bones! take a shovel, take a broom! Get to work,
and help us!'--'Help you do what?' said I. 'To make the fort and roll
snow-balls,' he replied. 'Not I; it is too cold,' I answered. Then the
boys laughed at me. My faith! to-day I think they were right. Then they
tried to push me out-of-doors, I resisted; I would not go. Suddenly
appeared one whom I did not know. He said nothing. He simply looked at
me. He signed to me to take a broom--to march into the garden--to set to
work. And I obeyed. I dared not resist. I did whatever he told me; and,
my faith! so, too, did all the boys. 'Is this one a teacher?' I asked
one of the scholars. 'He does not look so; he is too small and pale
and thin.'--'No,' replied the boy; 'it is Napoleon.'--'And who is
Napoleon?' I asked; for at that time I was as ignorant as all of you
here. 'Is he our patron? Is he the king? Is he the pope?'--'No; he is
Napoleon,' the boy replied again, shrugging his shoulders. I did not ask
more. The boy was right. Napoleon was neither boy nor man, patron,
king, nor pope; he was Napoleon! You should have seen him while we
were working. His hand was pointing continually,--here, there,
everywhere,--indicating what he wished to have done; his clear voice was
ever explaining or commanding. Then, when we had cut paths in the snow,
and had built ramparts, dug trenches, raised fortifications, rolled
snow-balls--then the attack began. I had nothing more to do, I looked
on. But my heart beat fast; I wished that I might fight also. But I was
the porter's son, and did not dare to join in the scholars' play. Every
day for a week, while the snow lasted, the war was fought at each
recess. Snow-balls flew through the air, striking heads, faces, breasts,
backs. The shouting and the tumult gave me great pleasure; but, oh! the
shoes I had to blacken! Then I said to myself, 'I wish to be a soldier.'
And I kept my word."
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
THE LITTLE CORPORAL.
"But why," asked the Corsican, as old Nonesuch concluded his story, and
all the veterans applauded with cane and boot, "why did you not say, 'I
wish to be a general,' and keep your word. Others like you have been
soldiers of the emperor--and generals, marshals, princes."
"Yes, Corsican," replied old Nonesuch sadly; "what you say is true. But
I will tell you what prevented my advancement. I did not know how to
read as well as a lot of the schemers who were in my regiment. In fact,"
old Nonesuch confessed, "I could not write; I could not read at all."
"Why did you not learn, then, father?" asked one of the veterans, who,
because he sat up late every night to read the daily paper, was called
by his comrades "the scholar."
"I did try to learn, Mr. Scholar," replied old Nonesuch, taking a pinch
of snuff from the Corsican's box; "but indeed it was not in the blood,
don't you see? Not one of my family could read or write; and then I saw
so much trouble over the pens and the books when I was blackening my
boots at Brienne school, that then I had no wish to learn. 'It is all
vexation,' I said. And when I became a soldier, what do you suppose
prevented my learning?"
"Were your brains shot away, old Nonesuch?" queried the scholar
sarcastically.
"My brains, say you!" the old man cried indignantly. "And if they had
been, Mr. Scholar, I would still have more than you. No; it was an
adventure I had after Austerlitz. Ah, what a battle was that! I had the
good luck there to have this leg that I have not now, carried away by a
cannon-ball"--
"Good luck! says he," broke in the youngster. "And how good luck, Father
Nonesuch?"
"Tut, tut! boys are so impatient," said old Nonesuch with a frown. "Yes,
youngster, good luck, said I. Well, one day, after I had my timber-toe
put on, the emperor, who always had thoughts for those of his soldiers
who had been wounded, gave notice that he had certain small places at
his disposal which he wished to distribute among us crippled ones, in
order that we might rest from war. Then all of us set to wondering,
'What can I do? What shall I ask for? What do I like best to do?' My
wish was never to leave my own general. He was General Junot"--
"Ah, yes! I know of him," said the Corsican. "He married a Corsican
girl, Laura Permon, a friend of the Bonaparte children."
[Illustration: "_I know not if I know,' said I_."]