Henry Chadwick

FRIENDS AND FOES

Napoleon, the prisoner in the school "lock-up," raged for a while like a caged lion. Then he calmed down into the sulks, returned to his determination to run away, concluded again that he would go to sea, thought of his family and his duties once more, and at last concluded to take his punishment without a word, though he knew that the boy who had mocked him into anger deserved the punishment fully as much as did he who had been the insulted one.

"But then," he reasoned, "he paid well for his taunts and teasing. I wonder how he is now?"

His schoolmate, the English boy, Lawley, was on duty outside the "lock-up" door, as a sort of monitor.

"Say, you Lawley!" Napoleon called out, "and how is that brute of a Bouquet?"

"None the better for seeing you, little one," replied the good-natured English boy, who had that love of fair play that is supposed to belong to all Englishmen, and, therefore, felt that young Bonaparte was suffering unjustly. Then he added:

"Bouquet will no doubt die, and then what will you do?"

"I will plead self-defence, my friend," said Napoleon. "Did not you tell me that an English judge did once declare that a man's home was his castle, which he was pledged to defend from invasion and assault. What else is my garden? That brute of a Bouquet came spying about my castle, and I did but defend myself. Is it not so?"

"It may be so to you, young Bonaparte," Lawley replied; "but not to your judges. No, little one, you're in for it now; they'll make you smart for this, whatever happens to old Bouquet."

For, like all English boys, this young Lawley mingled with his love of justice an equal love for teasing: and like most of the boys at Brienne school, he declared it to be "great fun to get the little Corsican mad."

"Then must you help me to get away from here," Napoleon declared. "Look you, Lawley!" and the boy in great secrecy pulled a paper from his pocket; "see now what I have written."

The English boy took the paper, ran his eye over it, and laughed as loudly as he dared while on duty.

"My eye!" he said, "it's in English, and pretty fair English too. A letter to the British Admiralty? Permission to enter the British navy as a midshipman, eh? Well, you Bonaparte, you are a cool one. A Frenchman in the British navy! Fancy now!"

"No, sir; a Corsican," replied Napoleon. "Why should it not be so? What have I received but scorn and insult from these Frenchmen? You English are more fair, and England is the friend of Corsica. Why should I not become a midshipman in your navy? The only difficulty, I am afraid, will be my religion."

"Your religion!" cried Lawley, with a laugh; "why, you young rascal! I don't believe you have any religion at all."

"But my family have," Napoleon protested. "My mother's race, the Ramolini" (and the boy rolled out the name as if that respectable farmer family were dukes or emperors at least), "are very strict. I should be disinherited if I showed any signs of becoming a heretic like you English; and if I joined the British navy, would I not be compelled to become a heretic, like you, Lawley?"

Lawley burst into such a loud laugh over the boy's religious scruples, of which he had never before seen evidence, that he aroused one of the teachers with his noise, and had to scud away, for fear of being caught, and punished for neglect of duty.

But he kept Napoleon's letter of application. He must have sent it, either in fun, or with some desire to befriend this badgered Corsican boy; for to-day Napoleon's letter still exists in the crowded English department, wherein are filed the archives of the British Admiralty.

At last, by the interest of certain of the friends whom the boy's misfortune, if not his pluck, had made for him—such lads as Lawley, the English boy, Bourrienne, Lauriston, and Father Patrault, the teacher of mathematics,—Napoleon was liberated with a reprimand; while the boy who had caused all the trouble went unpunished, save for the headache that Napoleon's well-aimed stone had given him and the scar the blow had left.

But the boy could not long stay out of trouble. The next time it came about, friendship, and not vindictiveness, was the cause.

Napoleon did not forget the good offices of his friends. Indeed, Napoleon never forgot a benefit. His final fall from his great power came, largely, because of the very men whom he had honored and enriched, out of friendship or appreciation for services performed in his behalf.

One day young Lauriston, who was on duty as a sort of sentry in the chestnut avenue that was one of Napoleon's favorite walks, left his post, and joining Napoleon, begged him to help him in a problem in mathematics which he had been too lazy or too stupid to solve.

"We will go to your garden, Straw-nose," said Lauriston; for both friend and foe, after the manner of boys, used the nicknames that had by common consent been fastened upon their schoolfellows.

"We will not, then," Napoleon returned. For, as you know, his garden was sacred, and not even his friends were allowed entrance. "See, we will go beyond, to the seat under the big chestnut. But are you not on duty here?"

Lauriston snapped his fingers and shrugged his shoulders in contempt of duty. "That for duty!" he exclaimed. "My duty now is to get out this pig of a problem."

Under the big chestnut, which was another of Napoleon's favorite resorts, the two boys put their heads together over Lauriston's problem, and it was soon made clear to the lad; for Napoleon was always good at mathematics.

But the time spent over the problem exhausted Lauriston's limit of duty; and when the teacher came to relieve him at his post, the boy was nowhere to be seen.

Now, at Brienne, military instruction was on military rules; and no crime against military discipline is much greater than "absence without leave."

So when, at last, young Lauriston was found in Napoleon's company, away from his post of duty, and beneath the big chestnut-tree, the boy was in a "pretty mess." But Napoleon never deserted his friends.

"Sir," he said to the teacher, "the fault is mine. I led young Lauriston away to"—he stopped: it would scarcely help his friend's cause to say that he had been helping him at his lessons; thus he continued, "to show him my lists"—which was not an untruth, for he had shown the copy to Lauriston.

"Your lists, unruly one," said the teacher—one of Napoleon's chief persecutors. "And what lists, pray?"

"My lists of the possessions of England, here in my copy-book," said Napoleon, drawing the badly scrawled blank-book from his pocket.

He handed it to the teacher.

"Ah, what handwriting! It is vilely done, young Bonaparte. Even I can scarcely read it," he said. "What is this? You would draw my portrait in your copy-book? Wretched one! have you no manners? So! Possessions of the English, is it? Would that the English possessed you! None then would be happier than I." Thereupon the teacher read through the list, making sarcastic comments on each entry, until he came to the end. "'Cabo Corso in Guinea, a pretty strong fort on the sea side of Fort Royal, a defence of sixteen cannons.' Bad spelling, worse writing, this! and the last, 'Saint Helena, a little island;' and where might it be, that Saint Helena, young Bonaparte?"

"In the South Atlantic, well off the African coast," replied Napoleon.

"Would you were there too, young malcontent!" said the teacher, "luring boys from their duty. This is worse than treason. See! you shall to the lockup once more. And you are no longer battalion captain."

Young Lauriston would have protested against this injustice, and declared that he was at fault; but, like too many boys under similar circumstances, he was afraid, and accepted anything that should save him from punishment. Moreover, a glance at Napoleon's masterful eyes held his tongue mute, and he saw his friend borne away to the punishment that should have been his.

"'Tis Saint Helena's fault, and not yours, my Lauriston," Napoleon whispered in his ear. "Bad writing is never forgiven."

So, as if in a prophecy of the future, Napoleon suffered unjust disgrace in connection with Saint Helena's name; and to-day, in the splendid exhibition-room of the historical library at Florence, jealously guarded beneath a glass case, is Napoleon's blue paper copybook, the very last line of which reads, by the strangest of all strange coincidences, "Saint Helena, a little island."

The boy's willingness to suffer for his friends, and, even more than this, the unjust taking away of his office in the school battalion, of which he was quite proud, turned the tide in young Napoleon's favor, so far as his schoolmates were concerned.

"Little Straw-nose is a plucky one, is he not, though?" the boys declared; and when he came on the field again, they welcomed him with cheers, and made him leader for the day in their sports.

They had great fun. Napoleon, full of his readings in Plutarch's "Lives," divided the boys into two camps; one camp was to be the Persians, the other the Greeks and Macedonians. Napoleon, of course, was Alexander; and, like the great Macedonian, he wrought such havoc on the Persians, that the school hall in which the battle was waged was filled with the uproar, and all the teachers at Brienne rushed pell-mell to the place, to quell what they were certain must be a school riot, led on by "that miserable Corsican."

Day by day, however, "that miserable Corsican" made more and more friends among his schoolfellows. For boys grow tired at last of plaguing one who has both spirit and pluck; and these Napoleon certainly possessed. He had come to the school "a little savage," so the polished French boys declared.

"I was in Brienne," he said years afterwards, as he thought over his school-days, "the poorest of all my schoolfellows. They always had money in their pockets; I, never. I was proud, and was most careful that nobody should perceive this. I could neither laugh nor amuse myself like the others. I was not one of them. I could not be popular."

So he had to go through the same hard training that other poor boys at boarding-school have undergone. He, however was petulant, high-spirited, proud, and had something of that Corsican love of retaliation that has made that rocky island famous for its feuds and family rows, or "vendettas" as they are called.

He showed the boys at last that they could not impose upon him; that he had plenty of spirit; that he was kind-hearted to those who showed themselves friendly; and, above all, that he was fitted to lead them in their sports, and could, in fact, help them toward having a jolly good time.

So, gradually, they began to side with and follow him. They left him in undisturbed possession of his fortified garden, they asked his help over hard points in mathematics, until at last he began even to grow a little popular. And then, to crown all, came the great Snow-ball Fight.