Part 5 (1/2)

Now, broccio was the favorite cheese of the Corsican children, and Pauline protested.

”Oh, yes, papa! let him have broccio, papa,” she said. ”Why, broccio is the best cheese in Corsica!”

”And that is why Napoleon shall not have it,” replied her father.

”Broccio is for good boys and girls; and Napoleon is not good.”

As he said this he glanced at Napoleon sharply, as if he really hoped for and expected a word of repentance, a look of entreaty. But Napoleon said nothing. He looked even more haughty and unyielding than ever; and his father, with a word of farewell only to Pauline, left the room.

”Poor Napoleon,” said Pauline pityingly, as their father closed the door. ”See, I will stay by you. But why will you not ask for pardon?”

”Because pardon is for the guilty, Pauline,” Napoleon replied; ”and I am not guilty.”

”And will you never ask it?”

”Never,” her brother said firmly.

”But, O Napoleon!” cried the little girl, ”what if they should always give you just bread and water and cheese?”

”And if they should, I would not give in,” Napoleon answered. ”What can I do? I am not master here.”

Pauline gave a great sigh of sympathy. The thought of never having anything to eat but bread and water and a little cheese was too much for her courage.

”I could confess anything, rather,” she said. ”I would ask pardon three times a day.”

”And I would not,” said Napoleon. ”But then, I am a man.”

Just then the three children who were to accompany their father to Milelli, pa.s.sed through the pantry, for they had been to bid Nurse Saveria good-by. Joseph caught the last word.

”A man, are you!” he cried. ”Then, why not be a man, and not a baby?”

”Bah, rascal! and who is the greater baby?” his brother responded. ”It is he who cries the loudest when things go wrong; and I never cry.”

Joseph said nothing further except, ”Good-by, obstinate one!”

”Good-by,” lisped baby Lucien.

But Eliza said nothing. She did not even glance at Napoleon as she pa.s.sed him; and he simply looked at her, without a word of accusation or farewell.

The three days pa.s.sed quietly, though hungrily, for Napoleon. Uncle Lucien said nothing to influence the boy, though he looked sadly, and sometimes wistfully, at him; and Pauline tried to sweeten the bread and water and cheese as much as possible by her sympathy and companions.h.i.+p.

Of this last, however, Napoleon did not wish much. He spent much of the time in his grotto, brooding over his wrongs, and thinking how he would act if people tried to treat him thus when he became a man.

The second day he dragged his toy cannon to his grotto, and made believe he was a Corsican patriot, intrenched in his fortifications, and holding the whole French army at bay; for though Corsica was a French possession, the people were still smarting under their wrongs, and hated their French oppressors, as they termed them. Some years after, when he was a young man, Napoleon, talking about the home of his boyhood and the troubles of Corsica, said, ”I was born while my country was dying.

Thirty thousand French thrown upon our sh.o.r.es, drowning the throne of liberty in blood--such was the horrid sight that first met my view.

The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle at my birth.”

It was not quite as bad as all that. But Napoleon liked to use big words and dramatic phrases. It had been, in fact, very much like this before Napoleon was born. He had heard all the stories of French tyranny and Corsican courage, and, like a true Corsican, was hot with wrath against the enslavers of his country, as he called the French. So he found an especial pleasure in bombarding all France with his toy gun from his grotto; and as he then felt very bitter indeed because of his treatment at home, you may be sure the French army was horribly butchered in the boy's make-believe battle before Napoleon's grotto.

Then he went back for his bread and water.