belonged to Sarténe,[10] a Corsican canton par excellence where, in
1800, hereditary vendettas still maintained the system of the eleventh
century; where the permanent strife of inimical families was suspended
only by truces; where, in many villages, nobody stirred out of doors
except in armed bodies, and where the houses were crenellated like
fortresses. His mother, Laetitia Ramolini, from whom, in character
and in will, he derived much more than from his father,[11] 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.[12]

"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,[13] "even the
very smell of the soil, which he could have detected with his eyes
shut; nowhere had he found the same thing. He imagined himself there
again in early infancy, and lived over again the days of his youth,
amidst precipices, traversing lofty peaks, deep valleys, and narrow
defiles, enjoying the honors and pleasures of hospitality," treated