filled, but especially jubilant, I fear, because he had got the best, as
he termed it, of the home tyranny, and shown how he was able to do for
himself even when he was driven to extremities.

It was this ability to use all the conditions of life for his own
benefit, and to turn even privation and defeat into victory, that gave
to Napoleon, when he became a man, that genius of mastery that made this
neglected boy of Corsica the foremost man of all the world.




CHAPTER FIVE.

A WRONG RIGHTED.

It was the third day of the family's absence from the Bonaparte house.
Napoleon had been at his favorite resort,--the grotto that overlooked
the sea. He had been brooding over his fancied wrongs, as well as his
real ones; he had wished he could be a man to do as he pleased. He would
free Corsica from French tyranny, make his father rich, and his mother
free from worry, and, in fact, accomplish all those impossible things
that every boy of spirit and ambition is certain he could do if he might
but have the chance.

As he approached his home, he saw little Panoria swinging on the gate.
She was waiting for her friend Eliza; for she had learned from Pauline
that the absent ones were to return that evening from their visit to
Melilli.