The Emperor.)] Old soldiers are apt to be boastful when they tell, as did the Nonesuch, of the deeds of a leader whom they so often followed to victory.

Madame Foa's pen has long since stopped its task of writing of French heroism for the boys and girls of France; but it never wrote anything more attractive or inspiring than the delicious bit of boasting that it put into the mouth of this dear and battered old veteran of Napoleon's wars,--Corporal Nonesuch of the Soldiers' Home.
For, if the American boys and girls who have followed this story will read, as I trust they will, the entire life-story of this marvellous man,--Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French,--they will learn that much of the boasting of old Nonesuch was true story, as he assured his comrades; while some of it, too, was,--let us say, the exaggeration of enthusiasm.
But there was much in the career of the great Napoleon to inspire enthusiasm.

The determined and persistent way in which, while but a boy, he climbed steadily up, using the obstacles in his path but as the rounds of a ladder to lift him higher, affords a lesson of pluck and energy that every boy and girl can take to heart; while the story of his later career, through the rapid changes that made him general, consul, conqueror, emperor, is as full of interest, marvel, and romance as any of those wonder-stories of the "Arabian Nights" for which "the youngster" expressed so much admiration, but which old Nonesuch so contemptuously cast aside.
There were dark sides to his character; there were shadows on his career, there were blots on his name.

Ambition, selfishness, and the love of success, were alike his inspiration and his ruin.

But, with these, he possessed also the qualities that led men to follow him enthusiastically and love him devotedly.
But people do not all see things alike in this world; and since the downfall and death of Napoleon, those who recall his name have either enshrined him as a hero or vilified him as a monster.