The baby Napoleon was an ugly little fellow, with a very big head. He screamed so loudly that he astonished most people who had ever had any experience of the strength of a baby’s lungs. As he grew to boyhood he was noted for his ugliness. Everyone who saw him remarked his enormous head and his feeble body. He had a naughty temper, and gave himself and others a great deal of trouble in consequence. When he was taken at the age of two to be baptized at the cathedral, he resisted the sprinkling of the holy water screaming violently, “No, no!” and striking everyone within reach, the priest included. The only person whom he feared, as a boy, was his mother. She realized what a passionate temper he possessed, and sent him, when five years old, to a girls’ school, hoping that the influence of his new companions would soften him a little. He seems to have been quite happy amongst his girl school-fellows, until he chose a sweet-tempered child of his own age as his first sweetheart. This aroused the jealousy of some of the girls and the taunting of others. The elder girls in particular made fun of the loving pair. One day, Napoleon, furious at the jeers of his school-fellows, seized a big stick and drove his persecutors away in a manner at once astonishing and painful. For this act he was expelled from the school and severely thrashed by his mother, whom, nevertheless, he dearly loved. He always said in after-life that all that was best in him was due to the influence of his mother in his early days. And yet Madame Letitia was fond of the rod when the boy was naughty. “Another day he made fun of his grandmother, who was in the habit of leaning on a stick as she walked, and said that she was like a witch. His mother happened to hear the remark, and looked sternly at the child, who contrived to keep out of her way until towards evening; then, when she seized him to administer punishment, the boy escaped from her grasp. The following morning he greeted his mother and prepared to embrace her as usual, but she had not forgotten the punishment that was his due, and pushed him from her. Later on in the day she told him that he was invited to dine with one of their relatives in the town, and he went up to his room to get ready. Madame Letitia followed him, found him changing his clothes, and fastened the door behind her, after which the young man had to submit to a flogging which was none the less severe that he had managed to evade it for a whole day.”[B] [B] “Napoleon’s Mother.”--TSCHUDI.