. It was
my brother Joseph with whom I had most to do; he was beaten, bitten,
scolded, and I had put the blame on him almost before he knew what he
was about; was telling tales about him almost before he could collect
his wits. I had to be quick: my mama Letizia would have restrained my
warlike temper; she would not have put up with my defiant petulance.
Her tenderness was severe, meting out punishment and reward with equal
justice; merit and demerit, she took both into account."

Of his earliest education he said at the same time: "Like everything
else in Corsica, it was pitiful." Lucien Buonaparte, his great-uncle,
was a canon, a man of substance with an income of five thousand livres
a year, and of some education--sufficient, at least, to permit his
further ecclesiastical advancement. "Uncle" Fesch, whose father had
received the good education of a Protestant Swiss boy, and had in turn
imparted his knowledge to his own son, was the friend and older
playmate of the turbulent little Buonaparte. The child learned a few
notions of Bible history, and, doubtless, also the catechism, from the
canon; by his eleven-year-old uncle he was taught his alphabet. In his
sixth year he was sent to a dame's school. The boys teased him because
his stockings were always down over his shoes, and for his devotion to
the girls, one named Giacominetta especially. He met their taunts with
blows, using sticks, bricks, or any handy weapon.

According to his own story, he was fearless in the face of superior
numbers, however large. His mother, according to his brother Joseph,
declared that he was a perfect imp of a child. She herself described
him as fond of playing at war with a drum, wooden sword, and files of
toy soldiers. The pious nuns who taught him recognized a certain gift
for figures in styling him their little mathematician. Later when in
attendance at the Jesuit school he regularly encountered on his way
thither a soldier with whom he exchanged his own piece of white bread
for a morsel of the other's coarse commissary loaf. The excuse he
gave, according to his mother, was that he must learn to like such
food if he were to be a soldier. In time his passion for the simple
mathematics he studied increased to such a degree that she assigned
him a rough shed in the rear of their home as a refuge from the
disturbing noise of the family. For exercise he walked the streets at
nightfall with tumbled hair and disordered clothes. Of French he