Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/273

Rh brothers and sisters, and a close companion of Joseph, only a year older. He is devoted to his high-spirited and energetic mother, once the beautiful Letitia Ramolino, whose life, since her marriage, has been so hard. He is dutiful to his father, the improvident, though ambitious Charles Marié de Buonaparte. Yet, although dutiful, he resents his father's lack of patriotism in seeking favors from the Frenchmen in authority in Corsica, for the boy, born only a year after Corsica had passed under French rule, had small love for those outsiders who had made it impossible for his native island to gain independence.

One of our pictures would show us Napoleon, a timid boy in the military school at Brienne, where his father had secured a place for him by showing he was of noble descent. The boy works hard at his tasks, his teachers commend his industry, while calling him reserved and obstinate.

The young Napoleon is not happy in the society of his one hundred and twenty fellow pupils, who, like himself, are supported by the Government at Brienne. They are largely