CHAPTER FIVE.
A WRONG RIGHTED.
It was the third day of the family's absence from the Bonaparte house.
Napoleon had been at his favorite resort,--the grotto that overlooked the sea.

He had been brooding over his fancied wrongs, as well as his real ones; he had wished he could be a man to do as he pleased.

He would free Corsica from French tyranny, make his father rich, and his mother free from worry, and, in fact, accomplish all those impossible things that every boy of spirit and ambition is certain he could do if he might but have the chance.
As he approached his home, he saw little Panoria swinging on the gate.
She was waiting for her friend Eliza; for she had learned from Pauline that the absent ones were to return that evening from their visit to Melilli.
Panoria, as you have learned, was a bright little girl, who spoke her mind, and had no great awe for the Bonapartes--not even for the mighty Canon Lucien, the all-powerful Nurse Saveria, nor the masterful little Napoleon.
In fact, Napoleon stood more in awe of Panoria than she did of him.

For the boy was, as boys and girls say today, "sweet on" the little Panoria, to whom he gave the pet name "La Giacommetta." Many a battle royal he had fought because of her with the fun-loving boys of Ajaccio, who found that it enraged Napoleon to tease him about the little girl, and therefore never let the opportunity slip to tease and torment him.
"Ah, Napoleon, it is you!" cried Panoria, as the boy approached her.
"And what great stories have you been telling yourself today in your grotto ?" "I tell no great stories to myself, little one," Napoleon replied with rather a lordly air.

"I do but talk truth with myself." "Then should you talk truth with me, boy," the little lady replied, a trifle haughty also.