The Bonaparte house was, as I have told you, a big, bare, four-story, yellow-gray house.

It stood on a little narrow street, now called, after Napoleon's mother, Letitia Place, in the town of Ajaccio.

The street was not over eight or ten feet wide; but opposite to the house was a little park that allowed the Bonapartes to get both light and air--something that would otherwise be hard to obtain in a street only ten feet wide.
Tired and thirsty from his walk through the sunshine of the hot August afternoon, the boy started for the dining-room for a drink of water.

As he opened the door in his quick, impetuous way, he heard a noise as of some one startled and fleeing.

The swinging sash of the long French window opposite him shut with a bang, and Napoleon had a glimpse of a bit of white skirt, caught for an instant on the window-fastening.
"Ah, ha! it was not a bird, then, that fluttering," he said.