Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica

oon to-be- famous brother departed from Corsica. The smaller boys regretted his departure, since it had been one of their great

merely a waste of time cracking a youngster's skull with a snowball when you can go out int

cratic friends boded well for a man fond of a military life who had sense enough to be on the right side. That it took an abnormal degree of intelligence to know whic

eyrand," he observed, when in the height of

the neck?" as

every month on 'Why I am what I am,' and all such stuff as that, I'd have condensed my career into one or two years, and ended by having my head divorced from my shoulders in a most commonplace fashion. Taciturnity is a big thing when you know how to work it, and so is proneness to irritability. The latter keeps you from making friends, and I didn't want any friends just then. They were luxuries which I couldn't afford. You have to len

of luxury that was not in accord with his ideas as to what a soldier should have. Whether or not his new school-mates, after the time-honored custom, tossed him in a blanket on the first

hinking apparatus of a soldier than a dozen of the bouchees financieres and lobster Newburgs and other made- dishes which you have on your menu. Made-dishes and delicate beverages make one mellow and genial of disposition. What we need is the kind of food that will destroy our amiability and pu

he abhorr

y soldiers had been of your dancing sort. How far would I have got if every time the band played a two-step my grenadiers had dropped their guns to pirouett

stand his point of view. So, having nothing else to do, he applied himself solely to his studies and to reflection, and it was the happiest moment o

lf, as he surveyed himself in the

remarked one of the maids of the pension

a true soldier never shows his back, and that is the kind of a military person I am. A false front would do for me. I am no tin sold

was stationed and where he formed a strong attachment for the young daughter of Madame du Colombier, with whom, history records, he ate cherries before breakfast.

annot support me, nor I you. We cannot live on cherries, and as yet my allowance is an ingrowing one-which is to say that it goes from me to my parent, and not from my parent to me. Therefore

a moment. Then, with an ill- s

aid. "Go. Go where duty calls yo

interrupte

ied, rushing from his

d married, as he had bade her do, and suffered, was face to face with starvation, it is said, on the authority of one of hi

after-years, he observed: "It is my opinion, my dear Emperor Joseph, that grape-shot is the only proper medicine for a mob. Some people prefer to turn the hose on them, but none of that for me. They fear water as they do death, but they get over water. Death is

he electrified his hostess and her guests by making a speech of some five hundred words in length, too long to be quoted here in full, but so full of import and delivered with such

ds Napoleon deemed it wise to leave his regiment for a while, and to return to his Corsican home on furlough. Of course an affecting scene was enacted by himself and his family when they were at l

he inquired. "Are you

hat. I was only weeping because-because, in the nature of things, you will have to go a

n, and, taking Joseph by the right arm, he twisted

should imbibe too strong a love for comfort and ease, and thus weaken his soldierly instincts, as well as break in upon that taciturnity which, as we have seen, was the keynote of

aid Joseph. "If he stayed below with us I fear I

gn of Terror in Paris, having once more for the moment yielded to an impulse to speak out

al scenes on a free pass. As for the trial, it was a farce, and I was triumphantly acquitted. The jury was out only fifteen minutes. I had so little to say for myself that the judges began to doubt if

leries on the 20th of June, 1792. Napoleon was walkin

said, rapidly climbing up a convenient post, from which he could see all that went on. "I d

ered Bourrienne. "This is

hose on these tramps, and keep them at bay until I could get my little brass cannon loaded. When I had that loaded, I'd let them have a few balls hot from the bat. This

obinism upon his head, the man who was destined before many year

m another hat to talk through! They'll have to do their work all over

place- an attack which Napoleon witnessed, as he had witnessed the first, from a convenient lamp-post, and which filled him wi

ve flights of stairs leading to his humble apartment, "I hate the aristocrats, as yo

not say," said Bourrienn

Napoleon, "is the

with a sigh. "I never was good at r

aconically, as he took off