Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
But when big and strong Nurse Saveria bore down upon them both, Uncle Joey, after an unsuccessful attempt to drag Napoleon with him, turned from the enemy, and sprang through the open window. Then Saveria flung her arms about the little Napoleon, and, in spite of his kickings and scratchings, bore him from the room, while all laughed except Pauline.
He was silently waiting till the nervous attack from which she seemed to be suffering should have passed, when there was a knock at the door, and Saveria, very much flustered, announced the prefect. At the words, Colomba rose, as though ashamed of her weakness, and stood leaning on a chair, which shook visibly beneath her hand.
Napoleon pushed away his uncle's hand. "It is not so!" he said; but he grew pale as he spoke. "I have not touched it." "But some one has. Hear me, Saveria!" the canon commanded; for in that house he had quite as much to say as the Father and Mother Bonaparte. "Call in the other children. We will soon settle this."
"If within five minutes by your watch Napoleon has not confessed, Saveria shall give him the whip." "The whip is for horses and dogs, but not for boys," Napoleon declared, upon whom this threat of the whip always had an extraordinary effect. "I am not a beast." "The whip is for liars, Napoleon," returned Papa Charles; "for liars and children who disobey."
"Saveria," Colomba called, "take the lantern and attend the Signor Prefetto. He will give you a letter to bring back to my brother." She added a few words which reached Saveria's ear alone. "Colomba," said Orso, when the prefect was gone, "you have distressed me very much. Will no evidence convince you?" "You have given me till to-morrow," she replied.
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.
"What, then, does he whip you?" asked Panoria. "No, he does not; but if he says we should be whipped, then Mamma Letitia hands us over to Nurse Mina Saveria; and she, I promise you, does not let us off from the whipping." All this Eliza admitted as if with vivid recollections of the vigor of Nurse Saveria's arm. Panoria glanced toward the grotto amid the rocks.
"But," suggested Napoleon, in a broken voice, touched with the shame of appearing to be a tell-tale, "it is possible for some one to come in here through the window." "Bah!" cried Saveria. "Do not be a silly too. No one has come through the window. You are the thief, Napoleon. You have taken the fruit. Come, I will punish you doubly first for thieving, and then for lying."
"But, see here, Father Nonesuch," protested the Corsican, "you must not deny to me the emperor's birth; for I know, I know all about it. Was not my mother, Saveria, Madame Letitia's servant? Was she not, too, nurse to the little Napoleon? She was, my faith! And she has told me a hundred times all about him. I know of what I speak.
On his head she set a pointed black velvet cap, embroidered with jet and silk of the same colour, and finished with a sort of tassel. "His stiletto is in the pocket of the jacket. I'll fetch you his pistol." A pistol is worn fastened to the left side of it. "I look like a brigand at the Ambigu-Comique," said Orso, as he looked at himself in the little glass Saveria was holding up for him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking