CHAPTER FOUR.
BREAD AND WATER.
You will, no doubt, wonder what Napoleon's mother was doing while her little son was undergoing his unjust punishment.

Perhaps if she had been at home things would not have turned out so badly with the boy; for "Mamma Letitia," as the Bonaparte children called their beautiful mother, had a way about her that none of them could resist.

She had much more will and spirit, she saw things clearer and better, than did "Papa Charles." Indeed, Napoleon said when he was a man, recalling the days of his boyhood in Ajaccio, "I had to be quick when I wished to do anything naughty, for my Mamma Letitia would always restrain my warlike temper; she would not put up with my defiance and petulance.

Her tenderness was severe, meting out punishment and reward with equal justice,--merit and demerit, she took both into account." So, you see, she would probably have understood that Napoleon spoke the truth, and that it was some one else who had taken the fruit from the basket of their uncle the canon.

But Mamma Letitia was not at home.