Free Betsy and the Emperor (9781439115879) by Staton Rabin

didn’t say a word. Encouraged, he went on: “Trapped. The role they have written for you does not suit you—like a good actress in a very bad play. You dream of doing great things, but no one expects it of you. Your heart aches to break free—and write your own destiny on the wind. You are not taken seriously. You want to be taken seriously. And someday they will see what they have missed in you—you will make them see. And they will be sorry.”
    He studied me.
    â€œAh, with Betsy’s jaw dropped open like that, she resembles even more our unfortunate gazelle.”
    Â 
    Yes, I confess I was astounded by Bonaparte’s analysis. I must have looked very ridiculous, standing there with my mouth gaping open. How could thisman, who’d met me only a few days prior, know my feelings so well? It was as if he were one of the girls I’d gossiped with in the darkness of the bunk room after curfew at Hawthorne. Perhaps Toby has been talking about me, I speculated, annoyed. I’ll have to have a long talk with Toby….
    â€œAnd now mademoiselle is wondering how I could see into her soul, n’est-ce pas ?” Bonaparte said.
    I stared at him. Unfortunately, he could tell by the look on my face that he’d guessed correctly, again.
    â€œYou see, mademoiselle, you and I are very much alike.”
    â€œWhat?!” I began angrily. “How can you say—”
    â€œNow, now,” the emperor interrupted soothingly. “Hold your fire. When I spoke of your feelings, I merely spoke of my own—when I was your age. You and I are as much the same on the inside as Roberaud and I are on the exterior. And kindred spirits can always recognize one another.”
    The emperor had a self-satisfied smile on his face that irritated me like an overstarched petticoat.
    â€œWhat could you and I possibly have in common?” I demanded.
    â€œ Beaucoup! A great deal. Born in the middle of a large famille —though in my case, there were eight enfants —I knew when I drew my first breath that I was unlike the others. I struggled to find myself, but there was no niche for me. Then I was sent away to school, far away from everyone known to me—just as you were, mademoiselle. I attended the military academy at Brienne. I did not play by the rules. Like someone else I know,” he said slyly. “I was lonely. An outsider. Did not ‘fit in,’ as the English say.”
    â€œOutsider?” What on earth did the man mean?
    â€œI was not French, you know.”
    Bonaparte? France’s greatest “hero”? Not French? Impossible!
    He saw my skeptical look and added, “ C’est vrai, mademoiselle. Quite true. I am Corsican. Born ‘Buonaparte.’ On a little island that was passed back and forth between France and Italy like a baton. At the academy, shunned for my strange accent and foreign ways. And my…er…diminutive stature. No one expected I would ever accomplish anything. Little Napoleon do anything of consequence? Jamais! But I was determined to prove them wrong. And that would take some time. I ended my glorious career as a scholar forty-second—in a class of fifty-one.”
    Ninth from the bottom? Even I had done better than that! Well, except my first term, of course.
    Still, from this moment forth, I found it increasingly difficult to view Bonaparte as a strange being from another cosmos.
    Just then we heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Bonaparte swung around in a flash, hand on his sword. It seems his old warrior’s instincts were still alive.
    It took a few moments for the intruder to come into the lamplight, but I knew him instantly by his hesitant, arthritic gait.

Chapter 7
    H uff!”
    â€œBetsy? Can it be? Betsy? Is that you, my dear child?” Huff said, squinting in the dimness. He looked much the same as when I had seen him last—still the peculiar red fez on his head, with tassel dangling,