In after-days, when Napoleon had climbed to sovereign power, many flatterers were willing to give him a lofty pedigree. To the Emperor of Austria, who would fain have traced his unwelcome son-in-law to some petty princes of Treviso, he replied, "I am the Rodolph of my race,"[1] and silenced, on a similar occasion, a professional genealogist, with, "Friend, my patent dates from Monte Notte."[2]
Charles Buonaparte, by the French governor's kindness, received a legal appointment in Corsica--that of _Procureur du Roi_ (answering nearly to Attorney-General); and scandal has often said that Marboeuff was his wife's lover. The story received no credence in Ajaccio.
Concerning the infancy of Napoleon we know nothing, except that he ever acknowledged with the warmest gratitude the obligations laid on him, at the threshold of life by the sagacity and wisdom of Letitia. He always avowed his belief that he owed his subsequent elevation principally to her early lessons; and indeed laid it down as a maxim that "the future good or bad conduct of a child depends entirely on the mother." Even of his boyish days few anecdotes have been preserved in Corsica. His chosen plaything, they say, was a small brass cannon; and, when at home in the school-vacations, his favourite retreat was a solitary summer-house among the rocks on the sea-shore, about a mile from Ajaccio, where his mother's brother (afterwards Cardinal Fesch) had a villa. The place is now in ruins, and overgrown with bushes, and the people call it "Napoleon's Grotto." He has himself said that he was remarkable only for obstinacy and curiosity: others add, that he was high-spirited, quarrelsome, imperious; fond of solitude; slovenly in his dress. Being detected stealing figs in an orchard, the proprietor threatened to tell his mother, and the boy pleaded for himself with so much eloquence, that the man suffered him to escape. His careless attire, and his partiality for a pretty little girl in the neighbourhood, were ridiculed together in a song which his playmates used to shout after him in the streets of Ajaccio:
"Napoleone di mezza calzetta Fa l'amore a Giacominetta."[3]
His superiority of character was early felt. An aged relation, Lucien Buonaparte, Archdeacon of Ajaccio, called the young people about his death-bed to take farewell and bless them: "You, Joseph," said the expiring man, "are the eldest; but Napoleon is the head of his family. Take care to remember my words." Napoleon took excellent care that they should not be forgotten. He began with beating his elder brother into subjection.