nly bequest he made to his son Napoleon.--His mother, on the contrary,
serious, authoritative, the true head of a family, was, said Napoleon,
"hard in her affections she punished and rewarded without distinction,
good or bad; she made us all feel it."--On becoming head of the
household, "she was too parsimonious-even ridiculously so. This was due
to excess of foresight on her part; she had known want, and her terrible
sufferings were never out of her mind.... Paoli had tried persuasion
with her before resorting to force... . Madame replied heroically, as a
Cornelia would have done.... From 12 to 15,000 peasants poured down from
the mountains of Ajaccio; our house was pillaged and burnt, our vines
destroyed, and our flocks. ... In other respects, this woman, from whom
it would have been so difficult to extract five francs, would have given
up everything to secure my return from Elba, and after Waterloo she
offered me all she possessed to restore my affairs." (" Memorial," May
29, 1816, and "Memoires d'Antonomarchi," Nov. 18, 1819.--On the ideas
and ways of Bonaparte's mother, read her "Conversation" in "Journal
et Memoires," vol. IV., by Stanislas Girardin.) Duchesse d'Abrantes,"
Memoires," II., 318, 369. "Avaricious out of all reason except on a few
grave occasions.... No knowledge whatever of the usages of society....
very ignorant, not alone of our literature, but of her own."--Stendhal,
"Vie de Napoleon": "The character of her son is to be explained by the
perfectly Italian character of Madame Laetitia."]

[Footnote 1112: The French conquest is effected by armed force between
July 30, 1768, and May 22, 1769. The Bonaparte family submitted May 23,
1769, and Napoleon was born on the following 15th of August.]

[Footnote 1113: Antonomarchi, "Memoires," October 4, 1819. "Memorial,"
May 29, 1816.]

[Footnote 1114: "Miot de Melito," II., 33: "The day I arrived at Bocognano
two men lost their lives through private vengeance. About eight years
before this one of the inhabitants of the canton had killed a neighbor,
the father of two children.... On reaching the age of sixteen or
seventeen years these children left the country in order to dog the
steps of the murderer, who kept on the watch, not daring to go far from
his village.... Finding him playing cards under a tree, they fired at
and killed him, and besides this accidentally shot another man who was
asleep a few paces off. The relatives on both sides pronounced the act