Napoleon's Young Neighbor Part 20

"Ah, they indeed are cruel--"

Like all Betsy's acquaintances, Napoleon knew that she had no strong love for sewing and the ordinary domestic duties. She was at the age when boyish sports were much more fun than the occupations that older people prescribed for girls.

"But no one required me to sew. I am sewing because I wish to."

The Emperor expressed his surprise at this announcement.

"Yes," continued Betsy; "I did not know what else to do. It is frightfully dull here, so I begged old black Sarah to find me some work, and this is what she brought." Betsy held up the partly made dress with considerable pride.

It is to Betsy's credit that she finished the dress old Sarah had brought her, although her fit of industry did not outlast her week's imprisonment.

"You should keep Mees Betsee's prison livery," said Napoleon to Mrs.

Balcombe, "and show it to her occasionally, when you think that she is on the point of doing something foolish that ought to be punished."

"Prison livery" was Napoleon's name for the dress that Betsy had made during her week in the cell.

Betsy, however, was only one of many persons who had disagreeable experiences with the rats of St. Helena. A sleeping slave, for example, had a part of his leg bitten off. One of Count Bertrand's horses in the stable had been severely bitten, and Dr. O'Meara had once had to defend himself from the rodents by hurling his bootjack repeatedly at them.

Other tales of fierce rats had been told, and in consequence Betsy, when she thought of her escape from real harm, had good cause for congratulation.

The battle of the rats happened while Napoleon was still living at The Briars, and though Betsy long remembered it, it cannot be said that she altogether profited by the lesson that it should have conveyed to her.

Later, when Napoleon was living at Longwood, Betsy, visiting at Madame Bertrand's, occupied herself with practising a song that was a favorite with one of the ladies of the garrison.

Betsy sang and played very well, and Napoleon, hearing the new song, praised the air though he did not understand the words. Now it happened that the song was a monody on the death of the Duc d'Enghien, for whose death Napoleon had been greatly blamed by friends as well as by foes.

"What is the song?" Napoleon asked.

A tactful girl would have devised some answer to spare Napoleon's feelings. But thoughtless Betsy, without a word, turned to the front page of the sheet of music, on which was a picture of a man standing in a ditch, his eyes bandaged and a lantern hanging from his waist, while soldiers were aiming their muskets at him.

"What is it?" asked Napoleon, to whom the picture conveyed no meaning.

"It represents the murder of the Duc d'Enghien," replied Betsy.

Napoleon examined the picture more closely. Then, turning to the young girl:

"What do you know of the Duc d'Enghien?"

"That you are considered the murderer of that ill.u.s.trious prince,"

replied Betsy, with great lack of consideration.

"It is true," responded Napoleon, "that I ordered his execution, for he was a conspirator and had landed troops in the pay of the Bourbons to a.s.sa.s.sinate me. In the face of such a conspiracy, the most politic thing was to put a Bourbon prince to death so that the Bourbons would not again try to take my life. The prisoner was tried for having taken arms against the Republic, and was executed according to law. But he was not shot in a ditch nor at night. All was open and known to the public."

This talk about the Duc d'Enghien led Napoleon to tell Betsy of many thrilling experiences of his own in escaping death at the hands of would-be a.s.sa.s.sins.

At another time Betsy ran up to Napoleon, crying, "Why is your face so swollen and inflamed?"

"Oh," replied Napoleon, a.s.suming a doleful look, "Dr. O'Meara has just drawn a tooth and I have had much pain."

"What!" exclaimed Betsy in the role of mentor. "You to complain of pain--the pain of so trifling an operation, though you have gone through battles innumerable with storms of bullets whizzing, some of which must have touched you. I am ashamed. But give me the tooth, and I will get Mr. Solomon to set it as an ear-ring."

Napoleon, listening to Betsy, was evidently amused by her tone of a.s.sumed severity, and laughing heartily, replied: "See how I laugh, even while I suffer. Ah, Mees Betsee, I fear you will never cut your wisdom tooth."

Although Betsy saw more of Napoleon than the other children, they were all fond of him; but it is to be feared that Betsy's example was not the best in the world for her little brothers, who were much younger than she. One day, for example, Napoleon had given little Alexander a pretty box made by Piron, filled with his delicious bonbons.

"When my brother had eaten all his sugar-plums," said Betsy, "and was grieving over his exhausted store, he unluckily chanced to espy a pill-box. He thereupon took some pills from the box and offered them to the Emperor. Napoleon helped himself, thinking they were sugar-plums, and began eating. He soon ejected them with coughing and nausea."

Las Cases, it is needless to say, reported this to Mr. Balcombe, who whipped Alexander soundly. n.o.body can deny that the little boy merited the punishment.

A favorite jest of Napoleon was to cry, "Now, Mdlle. Betsee, I hope you have been a good child and learned your lessons."

Then Betsy would redden and toss her head, for, like most girls in their early teens, she wished to be thought older than she was. This habit of teasing was one that Napoleon had found time to indulge in even when he was at the height of his power. He was very fond of children, and some one has said that no case is known in which he refused to grant a favor when a child was asked to be the messenger. He was fond of his nieces and nephews, and devoted to his step-children. Few brothers have ever been kinder to their brothers and sisters than Napoleon to his. When he was only sixteen, he began to take a great interest in the education of his brother Lucien, who was six years younger. When he was a lieutenant in the army, he made real sacrifices for Louis, who was twelve years old. Yet, in spite of his love for them, he teased them just as he teased Betsy. Every one knows how he used to fondle the little King of Rome and carry him around in his arms while he was dictating to his secretaries. One who knew him writes:

"It used to be a real holiday for the Emperor when Queen Hortense came to see her mother, bringing her two children. Napoleon would take them in his arms, caress them, often tease them, and burst into laughter as if he had been of their own age, when, according to his custom, he had smeared their faces with jam or cream."

Sometimes, however, he went too far, even with his young relatives. Once when he had playfully pulled the ears of his nephew, little Achille Murat, the boy protested, "You are a naughty, wicked man," to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of his uncle.

But if Napoleon was inclined to tease the young people at The Briars, he was also ready to do pleasant things for them. He certainly entered into the feelings of young people. With them he became a child, and an amusing one. Many were the games he played with Betsy and her brothers and sister, not only blindman's buff but puss in the corner and other quieter games.

Betsy was not the only one of the Balcombe family whom Napoleon loved to tease. Jane, the elder sister, was the more dignified and it was therefore easier to embarra.s.s her. Toward the end of her stay at St.

Helena, an English surgeon, Dr. Stokoe, was sent to the island. He was much the senior of Jane, but, because the two were seen much together, the gossips of St. Helena thought that he wished to marry her.

Napoleon himself occasionally teased Jane about Dr. Stokoe, and professed to think that Mr. Balcombe was a cruel father, standing in the way of his daughter's happiness. "Why have you refused your daughter to the surgeon of the flagship?" he would ask mischievously, adding, "_C'est un brave homme_."

Napoleon's capacity for seeing the humorous side of things kept up his spirits wonderfully during his first year or two of exile. Betsy's enjoyment of a joke, even of a practical joke, was perhaps the strongest bond between the Emperor and his little neighbor.

"Come," he would say, "come, Mees Betsee, sit down and sing like our dear departed friend." By this term Napoleon referred to a certain lady who believed herself to be the possessor of a very fine voice. To exhibit her prowess this lady would sit down and sing Italian airs in an affected style. At the end of a performance the lady expected, and received, the Emperor's compliments; but when at last she was away and out of hearing, he roared with laughter as Betsy, at the piano, imitated the lady's affectations.

With his eyes closed he would pretend that he really believed he was listening to the operatic lady, and end by thanking Betsy gravely for the pleasure she had given.

Napoleon himself was a good mimic. He amused the Balcombe family greatly by his imitation of London c.o.c.kney street cries.

"Mees Jane," he asked one evening, "have you ever heard the London cries?"

"No, sir, never," she replied.

"Then I must let you hear them;" and without waiting further, he began to make a series of shrill sounds. At first it was difficult to distinguish the words, for Napoleon's droll accent could hardly be called good English. His intonation, however, was perfect, and exactly represented the street venders crying their wares.

"You must have been in London, unknown to any one," cried Jane; "for if you haven't been there, I don't see how you could have got those cries so perfectly."

In suggesting that Napoleon might have been in London incognito, Jane was only repeating what then had wide currency--that Napoleon in the height of his power had slipped away from Paris, letting no one know that he was to cross the Channel, to spend a few days in London, studying the English and their ways.

To the inquisitive Jane, however, Napoleon gave no information as to the truth of this belief.

"I was much entertained," he said, "by one of my buffos, who introduced London street cries into a comedy that he got up in Paris."

This mention of the theatre led Napoleon to speak of Talma. "He was the truest actor to nature that ever trod the boards," he said.

"Talma?" repeated Betsy, catching the actor's name. "Oh, I remember; they used to say that you took lessons from him how to sit on the throne."