mine!" With that, he tossed his store of dry bread to the shepherd boys,
and, walking back to town, ran in to visit his foster mother; that is,
the woman who had been his nurse when he was a baby.

Nurse Camilla, as he called her, or sometimes "foster-mamma Camilla,"
was now the widow Ilari; but since her husband had been killed in one of
those terrible family quarrels known as a Corsican _vendetta_, she had
lived in a little house on one of the narrow streets of Ajaccio, not far
from the Bonapartes.

She was very fond of her baby, as she called Napoleon; and when he told
her of his disgrace at home, she said,--

"Bah! the sillies! Do they not know a truth-teller when they see one?
And so they would keep you on bread and water? Not if Nurse Camilla can
prevent it. See, now! here is a plenty to eat, and just what my own boy
likes, does he not? Eat, eat, my son, and never mind the stale bread of
that stingy Saveria."

Then she petted and caressed the boy she so adored; she gave him the
best her house afforded, and sent him away to his own home satisfied and
filled, but especially jubilant, I fear, because he had got the best, as
he termed it, of the home tyranny, and shown how he was able to do for
himself even when he was driven to extremities.

It was this ability to use all the conditions of life for his own
benefit, and to turn even privation and defeat into victory, that gave
to Napoleon, when he became a man, that genius of mastery that made this
neglected boy of Corsica the foremost man of all the world.

CHAPTER FIVE.

A WRONG RIGHTED.

It was the third day of the family's absence from the Bonaparte house.
Napoleon had been at his favorite resort,--the grotto that overlooked
the sea. He had been brooding over his fancied wrongs, as well as his
real ones; he had wished he could be a man to do as he pleased. He would
free Corsica from French tyranny, make his father rich, and his mother
free from worry, and, in fact, accomplish all those impossible things
that every boy of spirit and ambition is certain he could do if he might
but have the chance.

As he approached his home, he saw little Panoria swinging on the gate.
She was waiting for her friend Eliza; for she had learned from Pauline
that the absent ones were to return that evening from their visit to
Melilli.

Panoria, as you have learned, was a bright little girl, who spoke her
mind, and had no great awe for the Bonapartes--not even for the