These narratives of his mother, these enthusiastic stories of heroes of the past, which the boy, with loud-beating heart, with countenance blanched by mental excitement, gathered from the beautiful lips of his mother, were the highest pleasure of the little Napoleon, and often in future years has the emperor amid his glory thought of those days never to be forgotten, when the child’s heart and soul hung on his mother’s lips, and listened to her wondrous stories of heroes.

These narratives of Letitia, this enthusiasm which her glowing language awoke in the heart of the child, this whole education which Letitia gave to her children, became the corner-stone of their future.  As a sower, Letitia scattered the seed from which hero and warrior were to spring forth, and the grain which fell into the heart of her little Napoleon found a good soil, and grew and prospered, and became a laurel-tree, which adorned the whole family of the Bonapartes with the blooming crown of immortality.

Great men are ever much more the sons of their mother than of the father, while seldom have great men seen their own greatness survive in their sons.  This is a wonderful secret of Nature, which perhaps cannot be explained, but which cannot be denied.

Goethe was the true son of his talented and noble mother, but he could leave as a legacy to his son only the fame of a name, and not his genius.  Henry iv., the son of a noble, spiritual and large-hearted Jeanne de Navarre, could not leave to France, which worshipped and loved her king, could not leave to his people, a successor who resembled him, and who would inherit his sharp-sightedness, his prudence, his courage, and his greatness of soul.  His son and successor was Louis XIII., a king whose misfortune it was ever to be overruled, ever to be humbled, ever to stand in the shade of two superior natures, which excited his envy, but which he was never competent to overcome; ever overshadowed by the past glories which his father’s fame threw upon him, overshadowed by the ruler and mentor of his choice, his minister, the Cardinal de Richelieu, who darkened his whole sad existence.

Napoleon was the son of his mother, the large-hearted and high-minded Letitia Ramolina.  But how distant was the son of the hero, who, from a poor second lieutenant, had forced his way to the throne of France! how distant the poor little Duke de Reichstadt from his great father!  Even over the life of this son of an eminent father weighed a shadow—­the shadow of his father’s greatness.  Under this shadow which the column of Vendome cast from Paris to the imperial city of Vienna, which the steep rock of St. Helena cast even upon the castle of Schonbrunn, under this shadow died the Duke de Reichstadt, the unfortunate son of his eminent father.

The little Napoleon was always a shy, reserved, quiet boy.  For hours long he could hide in some obscure corner of the house or of the garden, and sit there with head bent low and eyes closed, half asleep and half dreaming; but when he opened his eyes, what a life in those looks!  What animation, what exuberance in his whole being, when awaking from his childish dreams he mixed again with his brothers, sisters, and friends!