His mother, Laetitia Ramolini, from whom, in character and in will, he derived much more than from his father,[1111] is a primitive soul on which Civilization has taken no hold.

She is simple, all of a piece, unsuited to the refinements, charms, and graces of a worldly life; indifferent to comforts, without literary culture, as parsimonious as any peasant woman, but as energetic as the leader of a band.

She is powerful, physically and spiritually, accustomed to danger, ready in desperate resolutions.

She is, in short, a "rural Cornelia," who conceived and gave birth to her son amidst the risks of battle and of defeat, in the thickest of the French invasion, amidst mountain rides on horseback, nocturnal surprises, and volleys of musketry.[1112] "Losses, privations, and fatigue," says Napoleon, "she endured all and braved all.

Hers was a man's head on a woman's shoulders." Thus fashioned and brought into the world, he felt that, from first to the last, he was of his people and country.
"Everything was better there," said he, at Saint Helena,[1113] "even the very smell of the soil, which he could have detected with his eyes shut; nowhere had he found the same thing.