easant and probably
true anecdotes have been told to illustrate the good-fellowship of the
young advocate among his comrades while a student. There are likewise
narratives of his persuasive eloquence and of his influence as a
patriot, but these sound mythical. In short, an organized effort of
sycophantic admirers, who would, if possible, illuminate the whole
family in order to heighten Napoleon's renown, has invented fables and
distorted facts to such a degree that the entire truth as to Charles's
character is hard to discern. Certain undisputed facts, however, throw
a strong light upon Napoleon's father. His people were proud and poor;
he endured the hardships of poverty with equanimity. Strengthening
what little influence he could muster, he at first appears ambitious,
and has himself described in his doctor's diploma as a patrician of
Florence, San Miniato, and Ajaccio. His character is little known
except by the statements of his own family. They declared that he was
a spendthrift. He spent two years' income, about twelve hundred
dollars, in celebrating with friends the taking of his degree. He
would have sold not only the heavily mortgaged estates inherited by
himself, but also those of his wife, except for the fierce
remonstrances of his heirs. He could write clever verse, he was a
devotee of belles-lettres, and a sceptic in the fashion of the time.
Self-indulgent, he was likewise bitterly opposed to all family
discipline. His figure was slight and lithe, his expression alert and
intelligent, his eyes gray blue and his head large. He was ambitious,
indefatigable as a place-hunter, suave, elegant, and irrepressible.

On the other hand, with no apparent regard for his personal
advancement by marriage, he followed his own inclination, and in 1764,
at the age of eighteen, gallantly wedded a beautiful child of fifteen,
Maria Letizia Ramolino. Her descent, though excellent and, remotely,
even noble, was inferior to that of her husband, but her fortune was
equal, if not superior, to his. Her father was a Genoese official of
importance; her mother, daughter of a petty noble by a peasant wife,
became a widow in 1755 and two years later was married again to
Francis Fesch, a Swiss, captain in the Genoese navy. Of this union,
Joseph, later Cardinal Fesch, was the child. Although well born, the
mother of Napoleon had no education and was of peasant nature to the
last day of her long life--hardy, unsentimental, frugal, avaricio