"You shall hear," Eliza replied. "Let me go and peep in, to see if he is
there. But no; hush! See, here he comes! Come; we will hide behind the
lilac-bush, and hear what Napoleon says."

"But will not your nurse, Saveria, come to look for us?" asked Panoria,
who had not forgotten Eliza's reference to the nurse's heavy hand.

"Why, no; Saveria will be busy for an hour yet, picking fruit for our
table from my uncle the canon's garden. We have time," Eliza explained.

So the two little girls hid themselves behind the lilac-bushes that
grew beside the rocks in which was the little cave which they called
Napoleon's grotto. The bush concealed them from view; two pairs of
wide-open black eyes peering curiously between the lilac-leaves were
the only signs of the mischievous young eavesdroppers.

The boy who was walking thoughtfully toward the grotto did not notice
the little girls. He was about seven years old. In fact, he was seven
that very day. For he was born in the big, bare house in Ajaccio, which
was his home, on the fifteenth of August, 1776.

He was an odd-looking boy. He was almost elf-like in appearance. His
head was big, his body small, his arms and legs were thin and spindling.
His long, dark hair fell about his face; his dress was careless and
disordered; his stockings had tumbled down over his shoes, and he looked
much like an untidy boy. But one scarcely noticed the dress of this boy.
It was his face that held the attention.

It was an Italian face; for this boy's ancestors had come, not so many
generations before, from the Tuscan town of Sarzana, on the Gulf of