Part 5 (2/2)
As he approached the house, he found that he was beginning to rebel at the bread and water diet.
Bread and water alone, with just a little cheese, begin to grow monotonous to a healthy boy with a good appet.i.te, after two or three days.
Suddenly Napoleon had a brilliant idea. ”The shepherd boys!” he exclaimed.
He hurried to the house, took from Saveria the bread she had put aside for him, and was speedily out of the house again.
This time he took his way to the grazing-lands, where, upon the slopes of the grand mountains that wall in the town of Ajaccio, the shepherd boys were tending their scattered herds.
”Who will exchange chestnut bread for the best town bread in Ajaccio?”
he demanded. ”I will give piece for piece.”
Those shepherd boys led a lonely sort of life, and welcomed anything that was novel. Then, too, they were as tired of their bread, made from pounded chestnuts, as was Napoleon of Saveria's wheat bread.
So Napoleon found a ready response to his offer.
”Here! I'll do it!”--”and I”--”and I”--”and I”--came the answers, in such numbers that Napoleon saw that his little stock would soon be exhausted; and, indeed, he was not overfond of chestnut bread.
So he improved on his idea.
”Piece for piece, I will exchange, as I offered,” he announced. ”But there are too many of you. See! he who will give me the biggest slice of broccio shall have first choice for the bread, and the next biggest, the next.”
This put a different face on the transaction, but it added spice to the operation; and Napoleon actually succeeded in getting for his stale home bread, goodly sized pieces of fresh chestnut bread, and enough of the much-loved broccio, and bunches of luscious grapes, ”to boot,” to provide him with a generous meal. But the next day the shepherd boys rebelled; they told Napoleon that his bread was stale, and not good.
They preferred their chestnut bread.
”But if you will look after our sheep while we go into the town,” said one of them, ”we will give you some of our bread.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: _”He tossed his dry bread to the shepherd boys”_]
This, however, did not suit Napoleon. ”I am not one to tend sheep,” he answered. ”Keep your bread. It is not so good that one wishes to eat it twice; and--here, I pity you for having always to eat that stuff. Take mine!” With that, he tossed his store of dry bread to the shepherd boys, and, walking back to town, ran in to visit his foster mother; that is, the woman who had been his nurse when he was a baby.
Nurse Camilla, as he called her, or sometimes ”foster-mamma Camilla,”
was now the widow Ilari; but since her husband had been killed in one of those terrible family quarrels known as a Corsican _vendetta_, she had lived in a little house on one of the narrow streets of Ajaccio, not far from the Bonapartes.
She was very fond of her baby, as she called Napoleon; and when he told her of his disgrace at home, she said,--
”Bah! the sillies! Do they not know a truth-teller when they see one?
And so they would keep you on bread and water? Not if Nurse Camilla can prevent it. See, now! here is a plenty to eat, and just what my own boy likes, does he not? Eat, eat, my son, and never mind the stale bread of that stingy Saveria.”
Then she petted and caressed the boy she so adored; she gave him the best her house afforded, and sent him away to his own home satisfied and filled, but especially jubilant, I fear, because he had got the best, as he termed it, of the home tyranny, and shown how he was able to do for himself even when he was driven to extremities.
It was this ability to use all the conditions of life for his own benefit, and to turn even privation and defeat into victory, that gave to Napoleon, when he became a man, that genius of mastery that made this neglected boy of Corsica the foremost man of all the world.
CHAPTER FIVE.
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