Publisher's Synopsis
The folk-tales of Napoleon Bonaparte herewith presented, if judged from the viewpoint of the historian or the biographer, are absurdly and grotesquely untrue; but to the anthropologist and the student of human nature they are extremely valuable as self-revelations of national character; and even to the historian and the biographer they have some interest as evidences of the profoundly deep impression made by Napoleon's personality upon two great peoples - the Russians and the French. The first story, Napoleonder, a characteristic specimen of Russian peasant folk-lore, was first published in St. Petersburg in 1901. The French story was first reduced to writing - or at least put into literary form - by Honore de Balzac.
