See! is not Napoleon for all the world like--like Lieutenant Puss-in-Boots ?" Whereupon they laughed yet more merrily, and Napoleon laughed with them.
"My boots are big, indeed," he said; "too big, perhaps; but I hope to grow into them.

How was it with Puss-in-Boots, girls?
He filled his well at last, did he not?
You will be sorry you laughed at me, some day, when I march into your house, a big, fat general.

Come, let us go and see Eliza.

They may go with me, eh, Madame ?" "Yes; go with the lieutenant, children," said Madame Permon.
[Illustration: _"Like--like Lieutenant Puss-in-Boots!"_] So they all went to call on Eliza, at the school of St.Cyr, and you may be sure that she admired her brother, the new lieutenant, boots and all.
And as they came home, Napoleon took the little girls into a toy-store, and bought for them a toy-carriage, in which he placed a doll dressed as Puss-in-boots.
"It is the carriage of the Marquis of Carabas, my children," he said, as they went to the Permons' house by the river.

"And when I am at Valence, you will look at this, and think again of your friend, Lieutenant Puss-in-Boots." But between the date of his commission and his orders to join his regiment at Valence a whole month passed, in which time Napoleon's funds ran very low.