but his father had left some Swiss orderliness in his blood, while they had in full measure the gift for intrigue from those centuries with the Medicis in Italian cities, and, superimposed on that, the loyalty and sterner virtues of these hills. Yet he loved them all-though he had not cared for Letizia's husband, a charming but unreliable fellow, shifting with the winds. But where was his rascally nephew? He wanted to have a word with the boy, away from his mother and his great-uncle, the old archdeacon Lucien, who now lay bedridden and querulous. Alone, he might take the too active young man to task, or at least find out what were the contents of this political pie he was having such a finger in.

At last he caught sight of himthe thin face, the thin eager figure in the worn lieutenant's uniform-rising and falling on his toes, as he harangued some Paoli adherents he had buttonholed.

"Giving them a dose of Rousseau prate and Jacobin calomel-and from their faces they seem to be suspicious of their young physician!" said the abbé to himself, as he hurried over the cobbles of the square.

But it was only a glimpse of his nephew that he caught, for, having finished his harangue, that young man paused just long enough to wave a "Good morning, uncle!" then ran up the steps of his club, whose precincts Fesch was unwilling to enter, feeling that the word Jacobin spelled something heterodox if not absolutely atheistical. He had no stomach for these smart young men, particularly those emissaries from Paris, who at first seemed personable and genteel enough, but who had

However, the abbé shrugged his shoulders, turning to pleasanter thoughts, as he made his way to the Casa Bonaparte, patting this or that child's head, and lingering to speak for a moment pastorally with some woman in a doorway. The Plaza Letizia had not been cleared, and the Bonaparte house stood at the juncture of two tiny streets, its height leaving the cobbles in constant shadow. Four horsemen abreast in the via Malerbe would have scraped the walls, and the via Pevero was still more narrow. But the house was imposing enough in Ajaccio, with its several wings, its pleasant time-worn stucco walls, and its rows of lofty long-shuttered windows. And, too, it was four stories in height, five with the attic where on his infrequent visits home his nephew Napoleon buried himself in his books. Come to think of it, even as a little fellow, he had always been interested in books—stories of heroes and wars and things, between his playing at soldier and his practical jokes.

Now the abbé was glad of the coolness within, which those spacious windows promised. The day had been hot, and he was, unlike most of his relatives, though active enough in his zeal for the church, by nature a rather sedentary fellow.

But no sooner had he entered and passed through the reception-roomthe salotto-than he heard a highpitched voice calling from somewhere upstairs:

"Fesch, Fesch, where is that rascal Napoleon?"

Was the boy having the whole household as well as the town by the ears?

229

Ascending the staircase, the abbé found the owner of the voice bolstered up in a huge four-poster, his lean old face showing a very seine of wrinkles, its once Corsican brown turned to old ivory against the bedlinen. However, the eyes of the archdeacon Lucien, who since the death of Carlo Bonaparte had been the nominal male head of the family, sparkled for the moment as brightly and beadily as ever, while he awaited the news. He was like some old candle of his own altars, burning sturdily almost to the last, but now at the wick's end beginning to falter, only to flare up in the wind stirred by his grandnephew, that little Napoleon who as a youngster so often had plagued him.

In a chair by the window sat his niece, the boy's mother, Signora Letizia Bonaparte, born Ramolini. She had been busied all the morning with household tasks-cleaning, carding flax, sorting linen, and indeed cooking the invalid's meals herself. In a house of several wings, many rooms, and eight children one could not be idle. Besides, there were only two servants, old Mammucia Caterina, the children's nurse, and Saveria, whom Joseph, the oldest boy, at his mother's request, had recently brought from Italy. Sa

veria's wage, four francs a month, the widow could afford, but not much more, for though they had this big house, a little country retreat at Melleli, and the two old farmsteads inland, there was not much ready

money.

She was engaged at the moment in sewing on a pair of breeches for little Jerome, and sat near the bedstead that she might be with the old man, who was a bit restless. She was very fond of him, for he had been just in his way, and kindly enough to her restless brood since her husband's death. True, he had been a little cautious of purse, but that was because he was a careful man, and thought the best way to teach his grandnephews to be provident was not to let them know how many gold pieces he had tucked away under the mattress. Perhaps, too, he thought this the best way to provide for Letizia, who was a 'woman of sense," when he was gone, which would be soon. But Letizia was too kind ever to speculate about either the probable time of his taking off or the sum total of his gold pieces.

As for her half-brother Fesch, he also was too amiable to worry, though he was not much like his sister. Indeed an observer would have said that Letizia, had she been a man, would not have cared to be a priest, while the Abbé Fesch was not miscast in that rôle. His broad fat face showed the Swiss blood of his father-her stepfather-and though he was thirteen years her junior and only twenty-seven, his hair was already thinning at the temples and fell benignantly behind in curls over his clerical shoulders. Altogether

he was a docile soul and not without parts or a pinch of dry humor. As the third boy, Lucien, named for the old archdeacon-a sharp-tongued rascal, that boy, and himself a youth of parts—had said, "Uncle Fesch is sweet-but not like a peach-just like a good sound radish."

The observer might also have guessed that the widow's household needed no masculine headship, that it must have been merely nominal, limited to such mellow counsel as a wise old priest could give. For what the old archdeacon actually meant when he called Letizia a "woman of sense" was that she was a remarkable woman.

What struck you first, when she rose to give the invalid his medicine, was a dignity of bearing which, though she could not have been more than middle size, gave the impression of height, and of that finely tempered steel of which Spartan and pioneer women, the world over, are framed. If fault could be found with the face, it was that it was a trifle too narrow; but one never thought twice of that, for the Grecian features had a noble candor and sweet gravity that transcended even their beauty of line.

Though of patrician descent she had had little schooling, but when she dropped her sewing in her lap, her head had a fine uplift and her arms a grace that no Madame Campan's finishing-school at St.Germain could give. Here was a woman, then, fitted for saddle or cradle, for camp or court, though she would not have cared for that-one built for mothering strong sons.

It was of the second of these sons that the archdeacon and his niece

had been talking before the arrival of Fesch; and now, as the abbé entered, the old man put the question again to him rather petulantly:

"Fesch, Fesch, you get slower as you get older; come, now what is my nephew up to?"

"I have no news of him," the abbé replied, "though I caught a glimpse of his coat-tails disappearing through the doors of the Jacobin Club. Flying coat-tails, flying heels, that seems to be your son, these days, Letizia. Why, the boy jumps like a flea over the whole island!" And he fanned himself with his hat in some irritation, as if his nephew had just led him a merry chase over the mountains.

The old archdeacon had been temperamentally calm enough, except when the boys teased him for money or harried his pet goats; and it was only illness that had acidulated his natural sweetness. Now he answered judicially enough from the bolster:

"You are wrong there, Fesch, in taking him so lightly. When I'm gone Joseph will be head of the family, but Napoleon will head more families than this in the via Malerbe. Who knows, Fesch, but he may give you a cardinal's hat!"

Letizia smiled. It was not so difficult to think of her son as handing out a cardinal's hat as it was to picture her amiable half-brother wearing one; but the old voice was going wearily on:

"In a way, though, you are right. I wish he'd stick to his regiment and the career chosen for him instead of mixing in these wretched brawls. He's a marked man, and some day he'll rouse the thunderstorm!"

At first Letizia did not join in this dialogue, for she was not given to words, though she could speak her mind on occasion, as the congregation of the Oratorio Giovanni Battista knew well. Its tower could be seen from the window where she sat; and it was there, not many years before, when a misguided priest asked her a question which rather shocked her modesty, that her answer had rung through the aisles: "That is a question I do not think proper to answer, sir, and if you persist I shall leave this church." Like mother, like son, it seems, for when by an odd coincidence Napoleon, then with his regiment in France, had been reminded by his confessor of what he owed his sovereign, the boy had replied: "I did not come here to talk about Corsica. It is not a priest's business to catechize me on my duty to the king!"

As for the tactless cleric in Ajaccio, needless to say, the archdeacon had seen to it that he soon left the parish, but the incident was often cited by Letizia's neighbors, by some admiringly as an evidence of fine spirit, by the jealous as a sign of her overweening pride.

Now the words of the archdeacon roused her, and she returned with something of a mother's fears:

"Thunder-storm sounds ominous;" then, more spiritedly, "but it would not be surprising; the Ramolinis should unleash at least one thunderbolt."

"With no credit to the Bonapartes, eh?" Fesch retorted, quizzically, yet not as if he wholly disagreed with her. Here Letizia noticed that the archdeacon looked weary, and she

signaled Fesch to silence. And when they rose to leave, she scanned closely the face, that mask of old ivory and netted wrinkles, with the wisps of hair, gray and sulphur-yellow, falling lankly on the bolster. The eyes were closed, but the lips, still moving, repeated prophetically his last word, "thunder-storm."

Letizia had enough of the Corsican's superstition to wonder how much of omen there was in this message from one who lay so close to the gates of Death; and the word persisted in her ears as she descended, with the abbé, the stairway to the salotto.

It was a pleasant and spacious chamber, cooled and lighted by lofty windows, but rather sparsely if not shabbily furnished—a few good chairs and a sofa of the Louis XV period; a huge chandelier with glass pendants; two large gilt mirrors on the wall; and above the low fireplace, a fading portrait in oil.

It revealed in a strikingly lifelike way a handsome man in a court costume, most bravely embroidered. Superficial charm was there, and possibly self-interest. Each lineament was almost too suavely perfect; and the large beautiful eyes gazed out from the canvas steadily enough, though lacking the forthrightness of the widow's looking up at him. The label bore the inscription, "Carlo Bonaparte, 1746–1785."

"No, Joseph, the boy does not get his masterfulness, if he can be accused of that, from his father, though I loved my husband. A flair for intrigue, perhaps though I detest the word-but what can you expect from his ancestry? And charm-no, Joseph, you can't deny

Perhaps, as she studied the portrait, her thoughts went back to her girlhood, when, at fifteen, she had married that handsome man in the tarnished gilt frame above her. And it was amazing, remembering the rigors she had undergone and the thirteen children-eight surviving that she had borne by the time she was thirty-four, to see how she still retained her youthfulness. The tresses which escaped from the confining head-dress were still nutbrown, the complexion dazzlingly white with just a touch of the peachblossoms that bloomed in the terrace back of the house, where the younger children now played.

"He will be twenty-one in September-no, August. With so many it is hard to remember birthdays; yet it seems but yesterday," she said, giving voice to the memories the portrait recalled. "You rememberbut no, you don't, for you were only six at the time-but old Caterina could tell you how we went to mass and had barely entered the church when I was seized with the birthpains and could hardly get home, and as a matter of fact did not reach my bed. So he was born like our Saviour-don't shake that finger, Fesch; it is not sacrilege, for I have no notion that Napoleon will be any saint, and I'm a very worldly and unworthy woman-but both were born after a journey, without pomp, and neither in a bed; one was laid in the manger, the other on a carpet. How do I make that out? Well, I had been away with Carlo in the hills, when we were driven out by the French, and camped up on the

boy, you recall that. Then I came back, and that morning, when old Mammucia Caterina found me on the sofa there, she laid him on this strip of red carpet, right here at my feet. It's frayed; but its flowers are almost as bright as when he used to follow them with his chubby finger.

"You think he is too active now; you should have seen him as a child," she continued as she returned to her sewing for little Jerome. "He was sullen and morose, kindly and winning by turns, sharing his toys, the soul of generosity; you could get anything out of him at times if you only appealed to him. But how he would fight when they enraged him, called him names, or made fun of him or his family! His first love-affair, at six, you remember that, with the neighbor's little girl at the school; and the boys used to follow him, jeering at him?”

"I remember," assented Fesch, smiling. "The child's name was Giacometta, and the rime ran something like this:

"Napoleone di mezza calzetta

Fa l'amore a Giacometta." (Napoleon with his stockings half down makes love to Giacometta.)

"Stockings half down." Letizia smiled too. "Yes, he was a funny little urchin. And it doesn't speak well for me or my training. But what would you? In a land where the vendetta traversale prevails, and nothing but blood-feuds, with the French on top of that driving us out, a mother had sufficient to do to clothe her children and give them enough to eat, without worrying