My Brother, Napoleon

It had been raining nonstop in Ajaccio for days. In the end, even the sea seemed to have been soaked through. The rain went on and on, thick and clinging, pouring down from the heights of a sky that seemed never to dry and crashing toward the bay. The sea was like a soft, gray sponge, swelling in the misty bay.

Yet in the unrelenting rain, the surface of the water seemed not to move. Only far off, an almost imperceptible, broad swell churned across the sea, raising a haze of spray that drifted toward the harbor, hemmed in by the damp... The city itself sent up a veil of vapor, skimming over its rain-slick walls to meet the mist over the sea. No matter which way you turned, it seemed you were breathing water. The air had finally become drinkable.

Through this watery haze, Joseph Bonaparte, eldest of the Bonaparte children, tall and thin as a bamboo pole, walked along the beach with an umbrella, heading toward the cliff that jutted out into the sea. The endless rain had stained it the same blue-gray as the ocean, and it reached into the bay like an arm. In the dry Mediterranean summers, Joseph and his younger brothers and sisters often came here to fish among the reefs beneath the cliff or hunt for all sorts of shells and oysters. Meanwhile, the little runt who was second in the family would take a book and go alone to read in a small natural cave halfway up the cliff.

But it's raining now. Could that troublemaker have run off to that cave again? Joseph muttered to himself as he walked toward the cliff.

That troublemaker was his younger brother, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was destined to leave a vivid mark on history. But at this point, the future emperor who would shake Europe was only a troublesome little boy.

Of Joseph's seven younger siblings, Napoleon gave him the most headaches. Perhaps because he never seemed to grow taller and people made fun of him, his temperament had become rather odd. Even among his brothers and sisters, few could get along with him. And little Napoleon was a violent sort, too. Whenever someone mocked him, or he got into a quarrel for one reason or another, he always preferred to settle it with brute force.

To be fair, Napoleon's build really wasn't suited to this approach. In theory, fighting depended on strength, and strength was inseparable from size. Otherwise, why would boxing matches have weight classes? Since size and strength were against him, yet Napoleon was keen on using violence to solve problems, the little runt developed two tricks to make up for his lack of strength.

The first was to attack vulnerable spots by unconventional means. For instance, he would catch someone off guard and bite them, or drive his knee into a sensitive area.

The second was to "beat them to the complaint." This trick was usually for dealing with his brothers. Anyone with a lot of siblings had fought with them as a child. Whenever a fight broke out and their mother, Letizia, came rushing over to stop it, Napoleon was always the first to complain—and the best at looking as though he had suffered a terrible injustice. Since he had rehearsed in his head how to act pitiful and fool their mother before he ever threw a punch, he was always the one who started the fight, yet somehow his brothers were the ones who got scolded.

As a result, his brothers didn't much like Napoleon, but they were also a little afraid of him and reluctant to cross him. There was only one exception: someone who wasn't afraid of Napoleon's tricks and could even make him do as he pleased. That person was Napoleon's eldest brother, Joseph. Once, Napoleon and Joseph had fallen out, and, as usual, Napoleon struck first. Catching Joseph off guard, he kicked him hard in the stomach. Joseph had been completely unprepared. The blow knocked him backward and sent him sprawling, and the back of his head struck a sharp stone. Blood poured everywhere, and he lost consciousness. Little Napoleon was terrified, too, and panicked. He hurried to call their mother...

Joseph remained unconscious for two whole days. When he awoke, he didn't recognize his family—and couldn't speak, either. More precisely, he had suddenly lost the ability to speak Corsican, a dialect of Italian. When he opened his mouth, only a strange language nobody understood came out. It sounded a little like English, but was quite different. The family thought he was possessed, that the devil had entered his body. (According to Catholic teachings, suddenly speaking a language nobody could understand was a classic sign of demonic possession.) If Joseph's father, Carlo, hadn't been a nobleman—even if only a minor, fallen noble—Joseph's fate might have been grim indeed. Carlo summoned Bishop Minier and asked him to perform an exorcism.

The ritual worked. Afterward, Joseph still hadn't fully recovered—he still couldn't speak Corsican, and his memory hadn't returned—but at least he had stopped speaking that strange, terrifying language that might have come from hell.

"The devil has been driven out of him," Bishop Minier said. "But it's like a house that has caught fire. Though we have put out the flames, all that remains may be ruins. When the devil takes over a person's body, he causes damage like a fire—or worse. Now that the devil has been driven out, rebuilding the house will be difficult. Whether this damage can ever be repaired is ultimately in God's hands."

"Amen!" Carlo, Letizia, and Joseph's younger brothers and sisters all said together.

Carlo then donated thirty francs to the parish—which was no small sum in those days—and asked Bishop Minier to take Joseph to the church to recover for a while. Surely, in the holy church, the damage wrought by the devil would heal more quickly.

Carlo's decision was clearly a wise one. Joseph recovered remarkably quickly in the church. Under the bishop's guidance, in less than three months, he had relearned how to speak and write Italian and had even learned Latin.

Bishop Minier always liked to keep Joseph by his side and tell everyone about him. "How wondrous is God's will! Look, the devil once possessed this man's body. When I drove the devil out in God's name, all I saw was a wasteland ravaged by fire. But God's light shone upon him, and saplings began to sprout in that wasteland. They grew so quickly that in the blink of an eye, they were about to grow from saplings into full-grown trees. Praise be to God, all-powerful and all-good." In his eyes, Joseph's recovery was not only proof of God's grace but also, in a sense, a testament to his own piety.

"Amen," those who heard him replied, making the sign of the cross over their chests.

Once he was certain Joseph had fully recovered, Bishop Minier had Charles take him home. The family found that their kind-hearted Joseph had returned. He was simply much quieter than before, and had become engrossed in reading. He had even begun teaching himself French.

Their mother, Letizia, was inwardly delighted by the change in her son. She was convinced that his recovery and improvement were entirely thanks to God's grace. To express her gratitude, she donated another Mass. And because of this, if anyone ever said anything bad about Joseph, she wouldn't hear a word of it. Her son had received God's grace—how could he possibly do anything wrong?

So Napoleon's trick of beating others to the complaint never worked on Joseph. If Napoleon tried to pin something bad on Joseph, Letizia would surely grab him by the ear and make him go to the statue of the Virgin Mary to confess his sin of slandering his brother.

Clever little Napoleon quickly realized this, so he had no choice but to compromise and show respect to his eldest brother, Joseph.

Of course, little Napoleon's change in attitude toward Joseph wasn't only because their mother now trusted her eldest son unconditionally. It was also because Joseph had changed enormously. Before, Joseph had been kind-hearted, but stupid. Yes, stupid. As stupid as a silly goose.

Now, however, he had changed completely. He could see through Napoleon's little schemes almost as soon as they crossed his mind. Even so, he never called him out; he simply refused to step into the traps little Napoleon laid for him. What's more, Joseph had grown learned. He had read many books and understood a great deal. Whenever Napoleon didn't understand something, he could ask his brother, and Joseph could usually give a convincing answer, no matter how strange or tricky the question.

Of course, Joseph had also acquired plenty of traits people didn't like. The most irritating was that whenever he answered one of Napoleon's questions, he would reach out and ruffle his hair, then say something like, "My foolish brother, the answer to that is..."

Today, Napoleon had gotten into trouble again. He had beaten the neighbor's boy, Paul, so badly that he had knocked him unconscious. (One of Napoleon's own lessons about fighting was that once you started, you shouldn't hold back. You had to be bold enough to hit hard.)

Mr. Giovanni, Paul's father, was a friend of Carlo's, and Paul was his only son. So the moment Napoleon saw Paul unconscious, he realized his father might give him a sound beating for it. Before anyone could react, he took off running.