The second day he dragged his toy cannon to his grotto, and made believe he was a Corsican patriot, intrenched in his fortifications, and holding the whole French army at bay; for though Corsica was a French possession, the people were still smarting under their wrongs, and hated their French oppressors, as they termed them. Some years after, when he was a young man, Napoleon, talking about the home of his boyhood and the troubles of Corsica, said, "I was born while my country was dying. Thirty thousand French thrown upon our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in blood--such was the horrid sight that first met my view. The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle at my birth."
It was not quite as bad as all that. But Napoleon liked to use big words and dramatic phrases. It had been, in fact, very much like this before Napoleon was born. He had heard all the stories of French tyranny and Corsican courage, and, like a true Corsican, was hot with wrath against the enslavers of his country, as he called the French. So he found an especial pleasure in bombarding all France with his toy gun from his grotto; and as he then felt very bitter indeed because of his treatment at home, you may be sure the French army was horribly butchered in the boy's make-believe battle before Napoleon's grotto.
Then he went back for his bread and water.
As he approached the house, he found that he was beginning to rebel at the bread and water diet.
Bread and water alone, with just a little cheese, begin to grow monotonous to a healthy boy with a good appetite, after two or three days.
Suddenly Napoleon had a brilliant idea. "The shepherd boys!" he exclaimed.
He hurried to the house, took from Saveria the bread she had put aside for him, and was speedily out of the house again.
This time he took his way to the grazing-lands, where, upon the slopes of the grand mountains that wall in the town of Ajaccio, the shepherd boys were tending their scattered herds.
"Who will exchange chestnut bread for the best town bread in Ajaccio?" he demanded. "I will give piece for piece."
Those shepherd boys led a lonely sort of life, and welcomed anything that was novel. Then, too, they were as tired of their bread, made from pounded chestnuts, as was Napoleon of Saveria's wheat bread.
