Charles Bonaparte, a man of handsome face and figure, seems to have had a talent for making friends, for he was made assessor to the highest court of Ajaccio, a member of the council of Corsican nobles, and later, the representative of these nobles to France. With the slender income from his wife’s estate and that from his own, aided by his official earnings, he maintained his family fairly well; but his pretensions and expenditures were so far beyond what he was really able to afford that, financially, he was never at ease. It was the familiar misery of the gentleman who strives to gratify a rich man’s tastes with a poor man’s purse. There was his large stone mansion, his landed estate, his aristocratic associates, his patent of nobility signed by the Duke of Florence; and yet there was not enough money in the house to school the children. The widowed mother of Madame Letitia had married a second husband, Fesch, a Swiss ex-captain of the Genoese service, and by this marriage she had a son, Joseph Fesch, known to Napoleonic chronicles as “Uncle Fesch.” This eleven-year-old uncle taught the young Napoleon the alphabet. In his sixth year Napoleon was sent to a dame’s school. For one of the little girls at this school the lad showed such a fondness that he was laughed at, and rhymed at, by the other boys. _Napoleon di mezza calzetta Fa l’armore a Giacominetta._[2] [2]Napoleon with his stockings half off Makes love to Giacominetta. The jeers and the rhyme Napoleon answered with sticks and stones. It is not very apparent that he learned anything here, for we are told that it was the Abbé Recco who taught him to read; and it was this Abbé whom Napoleon remembered in his will. As to little Giacominetta, Napoleonic chronicles lose her completely, and she takes her place among the “dream children” of very primitive poesy. Just what sort of a boy Napoleon was at this early period, it is next to impossible to say. Perhaps he did not differ greatly from other boys of his own age. Probably he was more fractious, less inclined to boyish sports, quicker to quarrel and fight. But had he never become famous, his youthful symptoms would never have been thought to indicate anything uncommon either for good or evil. At St. Helena, the weary captive amused himself by picturing the young Napoleon as the bad boy of the town. He quarrelled, he fought, he bit and scratched, he terrorized his brothers and sisters, and so forth. It may be true, it may not be; his mother is reported as saying that he was a “perfect imp of a child,” but the authority is doubtful.