DEMOCRATIC INNOCENCE.
The young Bonaparte and his wretched Relatives in their native Poverty, while Free Booters in the island of Corsica.
Napoleon said of himself: ‘I was an obstinate and inquisitive child. I was extremely headstrong; nothing overawed me, nothing disconcerted me. I made myself formidable to the whole family. My brother Joseph was the one with whom I was oftenest embroiled; he was bitten, beaten, abused: I went to complain before he had time to recover his confusion.’
At ten years of age, through the medium of his patron, Count Marbœuf, he was sent to the military school at Brienne, which he entered on April 23, 1779. Here he was shy and reserved, and not at all liked by his schoolfellows, who twitted him with his poverty, the country whence he came, his name, and made reflections on his mother; the last particularly exasperating him. His veracious Hudibrastic historian says:—
When he two years at school had been,
He proved more violent and mean:
Unlike his sprightly fellow boys,
Amused with playthings and with toys;
At shuttlecock he’d never stop,
Nor deign to whip the bounding top.
His garden was his sole delight,
Which ne’er improv’d his mental sight;
But thus in childhood serv’d to show
He was to all mankind a foe.
His schoolfellows, in keen sedateness,
He robb’d to prove his urchin greatness:
Deluded by his wheedling art,
Some cheerfully resign’d a part
Of their possessions, and to these }
He added what he chose to seize; }
Then, planting it with num’rous trees }
And putting palisades all round,
He strutted monarch of the ground;
* * * * *
* * * * *
’Twas on a welcome festive morn,
For some great saint divinely born.
No matter why, it was a jolly day,
Boys must be merry on a holiday;
And now behold their bulging pockets,
Enrich’d with pistols, squibs, and rockets—
When some, but humbly begg’d his pardon
Threw fireworks into Boney’s garden;
’Twas chiefly manag’d by the breeze
Which sent them ’mong his plants and trees;
Bursting, the cracks were oft repeated,
Nap’s ears were with the thunder greeted;
Th’ explosions discomposed, I wot,
Th’ arrangement of the lovely spot.
Nap saw it with corroding spite,
And now began his lips to bite;
But strove his anger to restrain,
Until revenge he could obtain.