He indicated the generals and chief officers in this army of stone by the larger pebbles; and you may be sure that the largest pebble of all represented the commander-in-chief -- and that was Napoleon himself.
As he marshalled his pebble army, under the lead of his generals and officers, shifting some, advancing others, rearranging certain of them in squares, and massing others as if to resist an attack, Napoleon was conscious of a snickering sort of laugh from somewhere above him.
He looked up, and caught sight of a mocking face looking down at him from the top of the hedge that bordered his garden.
"Ho, ho! Straw-nose!" the spy cried out; "and what is the baby doing?
Is it playing with the pretty pebbles?
Is it making mud-pies?
It was a sweet child, so it was." Napoleon flushed with anger, enraged both at the intrusion and the teasing.
"Pig! imbecile!" he cried; "get down from my hedge, or I will make you!" "Ho! hear the infant!" came back the taunting answer.

"He will make me--this pretty Corsican baby who plays with pebbles.

He will make me! That is good! I laugh; I--Oh, help! help! the Corsican has killed me!" [Illustration: "_'Get down from my hedge' cried Napoleon_"] For a moment Napoleon thought indeed he had; for a moment, too, I am afraid, he did not care.

For so enraged was he at the boy's insults and actions, that he had caught up his biggest pebble, which happened to be Napoleon the general, and flung it at the intruder.

It struck him squarely between the eyes, and so stunned him that he fell back from the hedge, and lay, first howling, and then terribly quiet, in the space outside Napoleon's garden.