Corsica. At last the day of departure arrived. There was a lingering
leave-taking and a sorrowful one. For the first time, the Bonaparte boys
were leaving their mother and their home.

"Be good boys," she said to them; "learn all you can, and try to be
a credit to your family. Upon you we look for help in the future. Be
thrifty, be saving, do not get sick, and remember that, upon your work
now, will depend your success in life."

"Good-bye!" cried Nurse Saveria. "When you come back I will have for you
the biggest basket of fruit we can pick in the garden of your uncle the
canon."

"That you shall, boy," said Uncle Lucien, slipping his last piece of
pocket-money into Napoleon's hand. "And take you this, for luck. You
will do your best, I know you will, and you'll come back to us a great
man. Don't forget your Uncle Lucien, you boy, when you are famous, will
you?"

Napoleon smiled through his tears, and made a laughing promise in reply
to his uncle's laughing demand. But, for all the fun of the remark,
there was yet a strong groundwork of belief beneath this assertion of
the Canon Lucien Bonaparte; the old man was a shrewd observer. His
friendship for the little Napoleon was strong. And in spite of all
the boy's faults,--his temper, his ambition, his sullenness, his
carelessness, and his selfishness,--Uncle Lucien still recognized in
this nine-year-old nephew an ability that would carry him forward as he
grew older.

"Napoleon has his faults," he said, in talking over family matters