Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/114

Rh Before one of these paintings, Betsy stood enraptured. It represented a slim youth, who looked almost tall, standing on a bridge and evidently cheering others on, while nearer him were the dead and dying.

"And this was really you?" exclaimed Betsy, for she recognized the standing figure.

"Yes," replied Napoleon, sighing, as if for his dead youth. "I was that boy. That was almost the beginning. I was more slender then than now."

"This is the ibis?" asked Betsy, pointing to a bird that appeared on many plates.

"Yes; these are mostly pictures of Egypt;" and the ibis led him to a long discourse on the Egyptian campaign.

"But don't go to Egypt, Miss Betsy," he concluded. "You will catch ophthalmia and spoil your eyes."

"Pourquoi avez-vous tourné turque?" ["Why did you turn Turk?"] interposed Betsy abruptly.

"What is that to you?" he asked, laughing. The question referred to his having become a Mahometan, but at first it was not clear to Napoleon what she meant.