The Boy Life of Napoleon Afterwards Emperor of the French

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE.

IN NAPOLEON'S GROTTO.

On a certain August day, in the year 1776, two little girls were strolling hand in hand along the pleasant promenade that leads from the queer little town of Ajaccio out into the open country.

The town of Ajaccio is on the western side of the beautiful island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea. Back of it rise the great mountains, white with snowy tops; below it sparkles the Mediterranean, bluest of blue water. There are trees everywhere; there are flowers all about; the air is fragrant with the odor of fruit and foliage; and it was through this scented air, and amid these beautiful flowers, that these two little girls were wandering idly, picking here and there to add to their big bouquets, that August day so many years ago.

Every now and then the little girls would stop their flower-picking to cool off; for, though the August sun was hot, the western breezes came fresh across the wide Gulf of Ajaccio, down to whose shores ran broad and beautiful avenues of chestnut-trees, through which one could catch a glimpse, like a beautiful picture, of the little island of Sanguinarie, three miles away from shore.

As they came out from the shadow of the chestnut-trees, one of the little girls suddenly caught her companion's arm, and, pointing at an opening in a pile of rocks that overlooked the sea, she said,—

"Oh, what is this, Eliza?—an oven?"

"An oven, silly! Why, what do you mean?" Eliza answered. "Who would build an oven here, tell me?"

"But it opens like an oven," her friend declared. "See, it has a great mouth, as if to swallow one. Perhaps some of the black elves live there, that Nurse Camilla told us of. Do you think so, Eliza?"

"What a baby you are, Panoria!" Eliza replied, with the superior air of one who knows all about things. "That is no oven; nor is it a black elf's house. It is Napoleon's grotto."

"Napoleon's!" cried Panoria. "And who gave it to him, then? Your great uncle, the Canon Lucien?"

"No one gave it to him, child," Eliza replied. "Napoleon found it in the rocks, and teased Uncle Joey Fesch to fix it up for him. Uncle Joey did so, and Napoleon comes here so often now that we call it Napoleon's grotto."

"Does he come here all alone?" asked Panoria.

"Alone? Of course," answered Eliza. "Why should he not? He is big enough."

"No; I mean does he not let any of you come here with him?"

"That he will not!" replied Eliza. "Napoleon is such an odd boy! He will have no one but Uncle Joey Fesch come into his grotto, and that is only when he wishes Uncle Joey to teach him the primer. Brother Joseph tried to come in here one day, and Napoleon beat him and bit him, until Joseph was glad to run out, and has never since gone into the grotto."

"What if we should go in there, Eliza?" queried Panoria.

"Oh, never think of it!" cried Eliza. "Napoleon would never forgive us, and his nails are sharp."

"And what does he do in his grotto?" asked the inquisitive Panoria.

"Oh, he talks to himself," Eliza replied.

"My! but that is foolish," cried Panoria; "and stupid too."

"Then, so are you to say so," Eliza retorted....