The Napoleon of the People

Excerpt

Napoleon, you see, my friends, was born in Corsica, which is a French island warmed by the Italian sun; it is like a furnace there, everything is scorched up, and they keep on killing each other from father to son for generations all about nothing at all—­’tis a notion they have.  To begin at the beginning, there was something extraordinary about the thing from the first; it occurred to his mother, who was the handsomest woman of her time, and a shrewd soul, to dedicate him to God, so that he should escape all the dangers of infancy and of his after life; for she had dreamed that the world was on fire on the day he was born.  It was a prophecy!  So she asked God to protect him, on condition that Napoleon should re-establish His holy religion, which had been thrown to the ground just then.  That was the agreement; we shall see what came of it.