I was half-dead with fear, and
remained fixed on the branch of the tree, where he had surprised me.
He wished to seize me and take me to my mother. Despair made me
eloquent; I represented my distress, promised to keep away from the
figs in future, and he seemed satisfied. I congratulated myself on
having come off so well, and fancied that the adventure would never be
known; but the traitor told all. The next day my mother wanted to go
and gather some figs. I had not left any, there was none to be found.
The gardener came, great reproaches followed, and an exposure." The
upshot of it was a sound thrashing!
But despite all the trials that the boy gave his mother, there always
existed between them a strong affection. Napoleon never spoke of her
in after years, except in words of praise. "It is to my mother, to her
good precepts and upright example, that I owe my success and any great
thing I have accomplished." And again: "My mother was a superb woman,
a woman of ability and courage."
The boy's first regular schooling was obtained at a small village
school kept by nuns. We have a picture of him there as a small thin
boy with a shock of unruly hair, a face not always clean, and
"stockings half off." But how many other boys have been guilty of such
conventional sins--only they do not get immortalized in the sober pages
of history!
He next went to a more advanced day school, and then to a seminary
conducted by the Abbe Recco.
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