s.

The brothers did not have a particularly pleasant home at Auxonne. They
lived in a bare room in the regimental barracks, "Number 16," up
one flight of stairs. It was wretchedly furnished. It contained an
uncurtained bed, a table, two chairs, and an old wooden box, which the
boys used, both as bureau and bookcase. Louis slept on a little cot-bed
near his brother; and how they lived on sixty cents a day--paying out of
that for food, lodging, clothes, and books--is one of the mysteries.

[Illustration: "_'I dreamed that I was a king,' said Louis_"]

In fact, they nearly starved themselves. Napoleon made the broth;
brushed and mended their clothes; sometimes had only dry bread for a
meal; and, as Napoleon said later, "bolted the door on his poverty."
That is to say, they went nowhere, and saw no one.

It was hard on the young lieutenant; it was perhaps even harder on the
little brother.

One morning, after Napoleon had dressed himself and was preparing their
poor breakfast, he knocked on the floor with his cane to arouse his
brother and call him to breakfast and studies.

Little Louis awoke so slowly that Napoleon was obliged to arouse him a
second time.

"Come, come, my Louis," he cried; "what is the matter this morning? It
seems to me that you are very lazy."

"Oh, brother!" answered the half-awaked child, "I was having such a
beautiful dream!"

"And what did you dream?" asked Napoleon.

The little Louis sat upright on the edge of his cot. "I dreamed that I
was a king," he replied.

"A king! Well, well!" exclaimed his brother, laughing. Then he glanced
around at the bare and poverty-stricken room. "And what, then, your
Majesty, was I, your brother,--an emperor perhaps?" Then he shrugged his
shoulders, and pinched his brother's ear.

"Well, kings and emperors must eat and work," he said, "the same as
lieutenants and schoolboys. Come, then, King Louis; some broth, and then
to your duty."

This was Napoleon at twenty,--a poverty-pinched, self-sacrificing,
hard-working boy, a man before his time; knowing very little of fun and
comfort, and very much of toil and trouble.

He was an ill-proportioned young man, not yet having outgrown the
"spindling" appearance of his boyhood, but even then he possessed
certain of the remarkable features familiar to every boy and girl who
has studied the portraits of Napoleon the emperor. His head was large
and finely shaped, with a wide forehead, large mouth, and straight