Page 5 - Italian American Herald - August 2021

EXPLORING PARADISE
The following day, I awoke early, for I
had a train to catch. The famous Micheline connects Bastia with Ajaccio – Napoleon’s birthplace and home to the Casa Buonaparte, or Maison Bonaparte, which is where the young “Nabulio” spent his first nine years, before he was shipped off to France and the military academy. The four-hour trip (about $30) was anything but boring. Indeed, the scenery along the way was breathtaking.
I saw wild, rugged mountains, graceful bridges, and a sky that was bluer than any
I had ever seen. This was nothing short of paradise. I imagined what Nabulio must have fantasized about while beholding this sky, and I grew increasingly anxious and excited. After all, I was on my way to his ancestral home, where he ate, played, slept, cried on his mother’s lap, and presumably, where he cursed his father upon learning that he was being sent to study military art with those hated French on the mainland – they who had invaded and seized his beloved island the year before he emerged from his mother’s womb.
As I stood in front of the Casa Buonaparte, I again felt compelled to pinch myself, much as I did when I first stepped foot inside
the Colosseum in Rome. Once I entered,
I was struck with awe. I knew that I was
surrounded by history. The house was grand. People were whispering all around me. I grew increasingly excited over the prospect of seeing where the boy was born, where he slept, etc., and I passed from one room to the next. I entered one room – called “The Trap Door Room” – and was told it was where,
in 1799, the general snuck out through a trap door and rendezvoused with a ship
that would take him to the continent. I was not told the circumstances under which this furtive act was carried out, aside from the fact that he had returned from his Egyptian campaign and spent some time at his ancestral home ... presumably to disconnect for a while. At last, I had arrived at the room about which I had been obsessing for days, weeks, months: The Birth Room, where the future emperor, king, dictator breathed his first. I was dumbstruck! Not because the room itself was so extraordinary; it absolutely was not. The room was sparsely furnished, with the exception of a couple pieces of very important furniture, most notably the yellow and white Louis XIV canapé, which is where Letizia Buonaparte gave birth to Napoleone di Buonaparte. This was one historic room! I thought to myself. The walls were nearly bare – no portrait of baby Nabulio to be found anywhere – and a light yellowish-tan in color.
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There was one piece of furniture which I thought was very interesting and evocative: the secretaire (desk) that was given to Letizia after the Revolution and where Nabulio likely sat at night and plotted his conquest of the world. This is where the young Corsican
boy sat and listed the goals, dreams, and
aspirations that, once attained, would make
him one of history’s greatest figures and
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