oved himself a leader indeed,
and, grasping the reins of command, advanced steadily from the barracks
to a throne. All this is history; it is the story of the development and
progress of the most remarkable man of modern times. You can read the
story in countless books; for now, after Napoleon has been dead for over
seventy years, the world is learning to sift the truth from all the
chaff of falsehood and fable that so long surrounded him; it is
endeavoring to place this marvellous leader of men in the place he
should rightly occupy--that of a great man, led by ambition and swayed
by selfishness, but moved also by a desire to do noble things for the
nation that he had raised to greatness, and the men who looked to him
for guidance and direction.

Our story of his boyhood ends here. For years after he came to young
manhood fate seemed against him, and privation held him down. But he
broke loose from all entanglements; he surmounted all obstacles; he
conquered all adverse circumstances. He rose to power by his own
abilities. He led the armies of France to marvellous victories. He
became the idol of his soldiers, the hero of the people, the chief man
in the nation, the controlling power in Europe; and on the second of
December, in the year 1804, he was crowned in the great church of
Notre Dame, in Paris, Emperor of the French. "Straw-nose," the
poverty-stricken little Corsican, had become the foremost man in all the
world!

But through all his marvellous career he never forgot his family. The
same love and devotion that he bestowed upon them when a poor boy and
a struggling lieutenant, he lavished upon them as general, consul,
and emperor. Indeed, to them was due, to a certain extent, his later
misfortunes, and his fall from power. The more generous he became, the
more selfish did his brothers and sisters grow. For their interests he
neglected his own safety and the welfare of France. His unselfishness
was, indeed, his greatest selfishness; and the boy who uncomplainingly
took his sister's punishment for the theft of the basket of fruit,
stood also as the scapegoat for all the mistakes and stupidities and
wrong-doings that were due to his self-seeking brothers and sisters, the
Bonaparte children of Ajaccio in Corsica.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS' HOME.

The Emperor Napoleon had long been dead. A wasting disease and English
indignities had worn his life away upon his prison-rock of St. Helena