The women of the salons, and other French portraits . to laythe foundations of a vaster than any French Empire,there was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, a baby girlnamed Maria Letizia Ramolino. Corsica was then much as it is now, the engagingneer-do-weel of the island family, always brave, pic-turesque, and delightful, entirely unreliable and no-bodys enemy but its own; the handsome boy withwhom all the powers coquetted, and whom in turnPhoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Greeks,Goths, Saracens, and Genoese loved and left. In 1750 it was Italian. The little Letizia spoke adegenerate Ital
The women of the salons, and other French portraits . to laythe foundations of a vaster than any French Empire,there was born at Ajaccio, in Corsica, a baby girlnamed Maria Letizia Ramolino. Corsica was then much as it is now, the engagingneer-do-weel of the island family, always brave, pic-turesque, and delightful, entirely unreliable and no-bodys enemy but its own; the handsome boy withwhom all the powers coquetted, and whom in turnPhoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Greeks,Goths, Saracens, and Genoese loved and left. In 1750 it was Italian. The little Letizia spoke adegenerate Italian as soon as she could speak anything,and spoke it as her mother-tongue to the end of herdays. She came of a good family, though to come ofa good family in a barbarous island two hundred yearsago did not necessarily imply any very high degree ofculture or refinement. Her father died when shewas very young. She was brought up by her motherexactly as little Corsican girls always were—book-learning dangerous and unnecessary, the art of reading 170. aMca~ 3-£t?e/zt<*~ *<? , y/tt <yM^£Ae^#/^/lr/<< , THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON 171 itself a suspicious accomplishment, and writing admir-able for signing ones name. But she was taught too,very early indeed, household order, economy, the gooddirection of affairs, the whole art of marketing, andthe practical arithmetic by which one makes a singlegreasy lira do the work of two. One can picture the serious infant MademoiselleRamolino—very pretty and good—going market wards,or to say her little prayers in the dark church hard by,through that Place which is to bear her name, past thewhite house where she is to live her young wifehood,and give a great man to the world. She was but asmall creature when her mother, Madame Ramolino,married again and became Madame Fesch. Whenother little girls are playing with dolls, this one wasgravely mothering a baby half-brother named other children are children still, bli
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectwomen, bookyear1901
