apartes, as they still wrote themselves, were
small, although their family and expectations were large. Charles
himself was the owner of a considerable estate in houses and lands,
but everything was heavily mortgaged and his income was small. He had
further inherited a troublesome law plea, the prosecution of which was
expensive. By an entail in trust of a great-great-grandfather,
important lands were entailed in the male line of the Odone family. In
default of regular descent, the estate was vested in the female line,
and should, when Charles's maternal uncle died childless, have
reverted to his mother. But the uncle had made a will bequeathing his
property to the Jesuits, who swiftly took possession and had
maintained their ownership by occupation and by legal quibbles.
Joseph, the father of Charles, had wasted many years and most of his
fortune in weary litigation. Nothing daunted, Charles settled down to
pursue the same phantom, virtually depending for a livelihood on the
patrimony of his wife. Letitia Buonaparte, being an only child, had
fallen heir to her father's property on the second marriage of her
mother. The stepfather was an excellent Swiss, a Protestant from
Basel, thoroughly educated, and interested in education, and for years
a mercenary in the Genoese service. On his retirement he became a
Roman Catholic in order to secure the woman of his choice. He was the
father of Letitia's half brother, Joseph. The retired officer, though
kindly disposed to the family he had entered, had little but his
pension and savings: he could contribute nothing but good, sound
common sense and his homely ideas of education. The real head of the
family was the uncle of Charles, Lucien Buonaparte, archdeacon of the
cathedral. It was he who had supported and guided his nephew, and had
sent him to the college founded by Paoli at Corte. In his youth
Charles was wasteful and extravagant, but his wife was thrifty to
meanness. With the restraint of her economy and the stimulus of his
uncle, respected as head of the family, the father of Napoleon arrived
at a position of some importance. He practised his profession with
some diligence, became an assessor of the highest insular court, and
in 1772 was made a member, later a deputy, of the council of Corsican
nobles.

The sturdy mother was most prolific. Her eldest child, born in 1765,
was a son who died in infancy; in 1767 was born a daughter,
Maria-Anna, destined to the same fate; in