y, holding up his cane, as he saw that
the Corsican was about to protest at this surprising statement, "to
prove it, let me tell you. He fought at Constantine; he fought at St.
Jean d'Ulloa; he fought at Sebastopol, and was conqueror."

"Come, come, Father Nonesuch!" broke in "the youngster," and others
of that group of veterans, "you are surely wandering. It was not the
Emperor Napoleon who fought at those places. That was long after he was
dead. It was the son of Louis Philippe, the Duke of Nemours, who fought
at Constantine; it was the Prince of Joinville who led at Ulloa; and, at
Sebastopol, the"--

[Illustration: "_Pif! paf! pouf! That is the way I
read"--Napoleon at the Battle of Jena. (From the Painting by Horace
Vernet_.)]

"Bah!" broke in the old veteran. "You are all owls, you! What if they
did? I will not deny either the Duke of Nemours nor the Prince of
Joinville, nor Louis Philippe himself. But what then? You need not
deny, you youngster, nor you, the other shouters, that when the cannons
boom, when the battles rage, when, above all, one is conqueror for
France, there is something of my emperor in that. Could they have
conquered except for him? Ten thousand bullets! I say. He is
everywhere."

"But, see here, Father Nonesuch," protested the Corsican, "you must not
deny to me the emperor's birth; for I know, I know all about it. Was not
my mother, Saveria, Madame Letitia's servant? Was she not, too, nurse to
the little Napoleon? She was, my faith! And she has told me a hundred
times all about him. I know of what I speak. Our emperor, Napoleon
Bonaparte, was born on the fifteenth of August, 1769, and when he was
a baby, the cradle not being at hand, he was laid upon a rug in Madame
Letitia's room. And on that rug was a fine representation of Mars, the
god of war. And because his bed on that rug was on the very spot which
represented Mars, that, old Nonesuch, is why our emperor was ever
valiant in war. What say you to that?"

"Oh, very well, very well," said old Nonesuch, as if he made a great
concession; "if you say so from your own knowledge, if you insist that
he was born, let it go so. I admit that he was born. But as to his being
dead, eh? Will you insist on that too?"

"And why not?" replied the Corsican, still harping on his personal
knowledge of things in Ajaccio. "I knew the Bonapartes well, I tell you.
There was the father, Papa Charles, a fine, noble-looking man; and their
uncle, the canon--