nd, when at home in the
school-vacations, his favourite retreat was a solitary summer-house
among the rocks on the sea-shore, about a mile from Ajaccio, where his
mother's brother (afterwards Cardinal Fesch) had a villa. The place is
now in ruins, and overgrown with bushes, and the people call it
"Napoleon's Grotto." He has himself said that he was remarkable only for
obstinacy and curiosity: others add, that he was high-spirited,
quarrelsome, imperious; fond of solitude; slovenly in his dress. Being
detected stealing figs in an orchard, the proprietor threatened to tell
his mother, and the boy pleaded for himself with so much eloquence, that
the man suffered him to escape. His careless attire, and his partiality
for a pretty little girl in the neighbourhood, were ridiculed together
in a song which his playmates used to shout after him in the streets of
Ajaccio:

"Napoleone di mezza calzetta
Fa l'amore a Giacominetta."[3]

His superiority of character was early felt. An aged relation, Lucien
Buonaparte, Archdeacon of Ajaccio, called the young people about his
death-bed to take farewell and bless them: "You, Joseph," said the
expiring man, "are the eldest; but Napoleon is the head of his family.
Take care to remember my words." Napoleon took excellent care that they
should not be forgotten. He began with beating his elder brother into
subjection.

From his earliest youth he chose arms for his profession. When he was
about seven years old (1776) his father was, through Marboeuff's
patronage, sent to France as one of a deputation from the Corsican
_noblesse_ to King Louis XVI.; and Napoleon, for whom the count had also
procured admission into the military school of Brienne, accompanied him.
After seeing part of Italy, and crossing France, they reached Paris; and
the boy was soon established in his school, where at first everything
delighted him, though, forty years afterwards, he said he should never
forget the bitter parting with his mother ere he set out on his travels.
He spoke only Italian when he reached Brienne; but soon mastered French.
His progress in Latin, and in literature generally, attracted no great
praise; but in every study likely to be of service to the future
soldier, he distinguished himself above his contemporaries. Of the
mathematical tutors accordingly he was a great favourite. One of the
other teachers having condemned him for some offence or neglect to wear
a course woollen dress on a pa