Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/74

50 when she was turning over the leaves of Estille's "Floriant," seeing that Gaston de Foix was called General, she asked Napoleon whether he was satisfied with him and whether he had escaped or was still living. This question shocked Las Cases, for it seemed to him extraordinary that a girl should imagine that the famous Gaston de Foix had been a general under Napoleon.

But this was not a very strange mistake for a little English girl to make. It is to be feared that Las Cases always took a certain pleasure in correcting the faults of the young Balcombes, or in reporting them to their parents.

From the first Napoleon claimed more of the society of Betsy than of the other members of the family, and so agreeable were his manners toward her that the little girl soon began to regard him as a companion of her own, with whom she could be perfectly at ease, rather than as one much older.

"His spirits were very good, and he was at times almost boyish in his love of mirth and glee, not unmixed sometimes with a tinge of malice," wrote Betsy years later.