If a person went hungry for too long, they would become hungry enough to want to eat anything they could.
The Corsican arrived at his mother's house for dinner and ate in a way too awful to watch, as if he had been starved in the army.
At his mother's house, no one would gossip no matter how lavishly he ate. Whose mother would not prepare a table full of delicious food when they came home?
Georgiana, however, had no appetite at all for the Corsican home-style beef meatballs placed before her.
It was not that the dish looked horrifying or tasted strange. It was the atmosphere.
She had met parents plenty of times, but always as a teacher meeting her students' parents, not as someone being inspected by the parents.
She had heard of Napoleon's mother. She still retained the bearing she had possessed before Napoleon rose to power and lived a traditional Corsican life. Letizia had only one maid, Camilla Ilari, who had also been Napoleon's wet nurse. The wife of a boatman treated Napoleon as dearly as if he were her own flesh and blood. Holding the face of France's First Consul in her hands, she kissed him over and over with passionate enthusiasm, while Napoleon ate and spoke to her in Corsican, which Georgiana could not understand.
Letizia's home did not look like a woman's home, either. A gun hung on the wall. According to Napoleon, she had joined the guerrillas in her youth. Carrying Joseph in her arms and pregnant with Napoleon, she had fought through the mountains and forests of Corsica.
Perhaps only such a valiant mother could have given birth to a son like Napoleon. Yet Letizia was an exceptionally beautiful woman, and Napoleon had inherited his Greek nose from her.
The moment