1768 a son, known later as
Joseph, but baptized as Nabulione; in 1769 the great son, Napoleone.
Nine other children were the fruit of the same wedlock, and six of
them--three sons, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome, and three daughters,
Elisa, Pauline, and Caroline--survived to share their brother's
greatness. Charles himself, like his short-lived ancestors,--of whom
five had died within a century,--scarcely reached middle age, dying in
his thirty-ninth year. Letitia, like the stout Corsican that she was,
lived to the ripe age of eighty-six in the full enjoyment of her
faculties, known to the world as Madame Mere, a sobriquet devised by
her great son to distinguish her as the mother of the Napoleons.

CHAPTER III.

Napoleon's Birth and Childhood[1].

[Footnote 1: The indispensable authority for the youth
of Napoleon is the collection of his own papers edited,
not always judiciously, by Frederic Masson and published
by him in cooeperation with G. Biagi under the title
Napoleon inconnu. The originals are now in the
Laurentian Library at Florence. They were intrusted by
the Emperor to Cardinal Fesch as a safe depositary,
probably in the hope that they would eventually be
destroyed. What the cardinal actually did with them
remains obscure. Some time early in the nineteenth
century they came into possession of a certain Libri,
one of the French government library inspectors, an
unscrupulous collector and dealer. From them he
excerpted enough matter for an article which, before his
disgrace, was published in an early number of the Revue
des Deux Mondes, but in the publication there was no
statement of authority and the article was forgotten,
important as it was. The originals were not found or
known until in the sale catalogue of Lord Ashburnham's
library appeared a lot entitled merely Napoleon Papers.
This fact was brought to the author's attention by a
friend, and when after a smart competition between
agents of the French and Italian governments the
manuscripts were deposited at Florence, he sought
permission immediately to examine and study them. This
was promptl