"But if you will look after our sheep while we go into the town," said
one of them, "we will give you some of our bread."

[Illustration: _"He tossed his dry bread to the shepherd boys"_]

This, however, did not suit Napoleon. "I am not one to tend sheep," he
answered. "Keep your bread. It is not so good that one wishes to eat it
twice; and--here, I pity you for having always to eat that stuff. Take
mine!" With that, he tossed his store of dry bread to the shepherd boys,
and, walking back to town, ran in to visit his foster mother; that is,
the woman who had been his nurse when he was a baby.

Nurse Camilla, as he called her, or sometimes "foster-mamma Camilla,"
was now the widow Ilari; but since her husband had been killed in one of
those terrible family quarrels known as a Corsican _vendetta_, she had
lived in a little house on one of the narrow streets of Ajaccio, not far
from the Bonapartes.

She was very fond of her baby, as she called Napoleon; and when he told
her of his disgrace at home, she said,--

"Bah! the sillies! Do they not know a truth-teller when they see one?
And so they would keep you on bread and water? Not if Nurse Camilla can
prevent it. See, now! here is a plenty to eat, and just what my own boy
likes, does he not? Eat, eat, my son, and never mind the stale bread of
that stingy Saveria."

Then she petted and caressed the boy she so adored; she gave him the
best her house afforded, and sent him away to his own home satisfied and