He was almost elf-like in appearance.

His head was big, his body small, his arms and legs were thin and spindling.
His long, dark hair fell about his face; his dress was careless and disordered; his stockings had tumbled down over his shoes, and he looked much like an untidy boy.

But one scarcely noticed the dress of this boy.
It was his face that held the attention.
It was an Italian face; for this boy's ancestors had come, not so many generations before, from the Tuscan town of Sarzana, on the Gulf of Genoa--the very town from which "the brave Lord of Luna," of whom you may read in Macaulay's splendid poem of "Horatius," came to the sack of Rome.

Save for his odd appearance, with his big head and his little body, there was nothing to particularly distinguish the boy Napoleon Bonaparte from other children of his own age.
Now and then, indeed, his face would show all the shifting emotions of ambition, passion, and determination; and his eyes, though not beautiful, had in them a piercing and commanding gleam that, with a glance, could influence and attract his companions.
Whatever happened, these wonderful eyes--even in the boy--never lost the power of control which they gave to their owner over those about him.
With a look through those eyes, Napoleon would appear to conceal his own thoughts and learn those of others.

They could flash in anger if need be, or smile in approval; but, before their fixed and piercing glance, even the boldest and most inquisitive of other eyes lowered their lids.
Of course this eye-power, as we might call it, grew as the boy grew; but even as a little fellow in his Corsican home, this attraction asserted itself, as many a playfellow and foeman could testify, from Joey Fesch, his boy-uncle, to whom he was much attached, to Joseph his older brother, with whom he was always quarrelling, and Giacommetta, the little black-eyed girl, about whom the boys of Ajaccio teased him.
The little girls behind the lilac-bush watched the boy curiously.
"Why does he walk like that ?" asked Panoria, as she noted Napoleon's advance.