It belene petiteste FACSIMILE OF THE LAST PAGE OF BONAPARTE'S EXERCISE-BOOK AT SCHOOL. ORIGINAL IN THE LAURENTIAN LIBRARY AT FLORENCE. THE LAST SENTENCE IS, "ST. HELENA, LITTLE ISLE FOR AN ACCOUNT OF THIS DOCUMENT, SEE OPEN LETTERS." their taunts with blows, using sticks, bricks, or any handy weapon. According to his own account, he was fearless in the face of superior numbers, however large. Of French, he knew not a word; he had lessons at school in his mother tongue. This scanty information is all we possess. It is substantially Napoleon's own account of himself in that last period of self-examination when, to him, as to other men, consistency seems the highest virtue. He was, doubtless, striving to compound with his conscience by emphasizing the adage that the child is father to the man-that he was born what he had always been. CORSICA had now been for six years in posRession of France. On the surface all was fair. However, Paoli and his banished friends were still in communication with the little remnant of faithful patriots left in the island. The royal cabinet, seeking to remove every possible danger of disturbance, even so slight a one as lay in the disaffection of the few scattered nationalsts, and in their unconcealed distrust of their conforming fellow-citizens, began a little later to make advances, in order, if possible, to win at least Paoli's neutrality, if not his acquiescence. All in vain: the exile was inexorable. From time to time, therefore, there was a noteable flow in the tide of patriotism. There are indications that the child Napoleon was conscious of its influence, listening probably with intense interest to the sympathetic narratives and anecdotes about Paoli and his struggles for liberty which were still told among the people. As to Charles de Buonaparte, some things he had hoped for from annexation were secured. His nobility and official rank were safe; he was in a fair way to reach even higher distinction. But what were honors without wealth? The domestic means were becoming ever smaller, and expenditures increased with the accumulating dignities and ever-growing family. He had made his humble submission to the French; his reception had been warm and graceful. The authorities knew of his pretensions to the estates of his ancestors. The Jesuits had been disgraced and banished, but the property had not been restored to him; on the contrary, the buildings had been converted into schoolbouses, and the revenues diverted into various channels. Years had passed, and it was evident that his suit was hopeless. How could sustantial advantage for the part he had taken be secured from the king? His friends, General Marbeuf in particular, were of the opinion that he could profit to a certain extent at least by securing for his children an education at the expense of the state. The first steps were soon taken, and in 1776 the formal supplication for the two eldest boys was forwarded to Paris. Immediately the proof of four noble descents was demanded. The movement of letters was slow, the red tape of officials even slower, and the delays in securing copies and authentications of the various documents were long and vexatious. Meantime Choiseul had been disgraced, and on May 10, 1774, the old king had died; Louis XVI. now reigned in his stead. The inertia which marked the brilliant decadence of the Bourbon monarchy was finally overcome. The new social forces were partly emancipated. Facts were examined, and their significance considered. Bankruptcy was no longer a phantom, but a menace of the most serious nature. Retrenchment and reform were the order of the day. Necker was trying his promising schemes. There was, among them, one for a body consisting of delegates from each of the three estates, nobles, ecclesiastics, and burgesses, to assist in deciding that vexatious question, the regulation of imposts. The Swiss financier hoped to destroy in this way the sullen, defiant influence of the royal intendants. In Corsica the governor and the intendant were both too shrewd to be trapped. They chose, and had appointed, from each of the Corsican estates men who were their humble servants and tools. The needy suitor, Charles de Buonaparte, was to be the delegate at Versailles of the nobility. They knew their man; his vanity was tickled, and, though nearly penniless, he accepted the mission, setting out in 1778 with his two sons Joseph and Napoleon. With them were Joseph Fesch, appointed to the seminary at Aix, and Varesa, Letitia's cousin, who was to be sub-deacon at Autun. In Florence the grandduke gave his friend, the father, a letter to his sister, Marie Antoinette. But it was really to Marbeuf's influence that the final partial success of Charles de Buonaparte's supplication was due; to the general's nephew, bishop of Autun, Joseph, now too old to be received in the royal military school, and later Lucien, were both sent, the former to be educated as a priest. It was probably Marbeuf's influence also which caused the heralds' office finally to accept the documents attesting the Buonapartes' nobility. On April 23, 1779, Napoleon was admitted to Brienne, and it was to Marbeuf that in later life he attributed his appointment. On New Year's day, 1779, the Buonapartes arrived at Autun. For three months the young Napoleone was trained in the use of French. Prodigy as he was, the difficulties of that elegant and polished tongue were scarcely. reached; it was with a most imperfect knowledge of their language, and a sadly defective pronunciation, that he made his appearance school-boy display proportionate to the pocketmoney of the young nobles, and a very keen discrimination among themselves as to rank, social quality, and relative importance. Those familiar with the ruthlessness of boys in their treatment of one another can easily conceive what was the reception of the newcomer, whose nobility was unknown and unrecognized in France, and whose means were of the scantiest. It appears that the journey from Corsica through Florence and Marseilles had already wrought a marvelous change in the boy. Napoleon's teacher at Autun described his pupil as having brought with him a sober, thoughtful character. He played with no one, and took his walks alone. But he was apt, and vain of his ap 66 ten to one. 'But you had a fine general Paoli," interrupted the narrator. "Yes, sire," was the reply, uttered with an air of discontent, and in the very embodiment of ambition; "I would much like to emulate him." The description of the untamed faun as he then appeared is not flattering: his complexion sallow, his hair stiff, his figure slight, his expression lusterless, his manner insignificant. Moreover, he spoke broken French with an Italian accent. During his son's preparatory studies at Autun the father had been busy at Versailles with further" supplications"; among them one for a supplement from the royal purse to his scanty pay as delegate, the other for the speedy settlement of his now notorious claim. The former of the two was granted not merely to M. de Buonaparte, but to his two colleagues, in view of the excellent behavior"-otherwise subserviency—of the Corsican delegation at Versailles. When, in addition, the certificate of Napoleon's appointment finally arrived, and the father set out to place his son, with a proper outfit, in his new school, he had no difficulty in securing sufficient money to meet his immediate and pressing necessities; but more was not forthcoming. NAPOLEON'S SCHOOL-DAYS. It was an old charge that the sons of poor gentlemen destined to be artillery officers were bred like princes. Brienne, with nine other similar academies, had been but recently founded asa protest against the luxury which had reigned in the military schools at Paris and La Flèche. Both the latter were closed for a time because they could not be reformed; that at Paris was afterward reopened as a finishing school. Various religious orders were put in charge of the new colleges, and instructed to secure simplicity of life and manners, the formation of character, and other desirable benefits, each one in its own way in the school or schools intrusted to it. The result so far had been a failure; there were simply not ten first-rate instructors to be found in France for the new positions in each branch; the instruction was therefore much impaired, and with it declined the right standards of behavior, while the old notions of hollow courtliness and conventional manner flourished as never before. Money and polished manners, therefore, were the things most needed to secure kind treatment for an entering boy. These were exactly what the young foundation scholar from Corsica had not. The ignorant and unworldly Minim fathers could neither foresee nor, if they had foreseen, alleviate the miseries mident to his arrival under such conditions. At Autun Napoleon had at least enjoyed the sympathetic society of his mild and unemotional brother, whose easy-going nature would smooth many a rough place. He was now entirely without companionship, resenting from the outset both the ill-natured attacks and the Playful personal allusions through which boys so often begin, and with time knit ever more firmaly, their inexplicable friendships. To the taunts about Corsica which began immediately he answered coldly, "I hope one day to be in a position to give Corsica her liberty." Entering on another occasion a room in which unknown to him there hung a portrait of the hated Choiseul, he started back as he caught sight of it and burst into bitter revilings; for this he was compelled to undergo chastisement. Brienne was a nursery for the qualities first developed at Autun. Dark, solitary, and untamed, the new scholar assumed the indifference of wounded vanity, despised all pastimes, and found delight either in books or in scornful exasperation of his comrades when compelled to associate with them. There were quarrels and bitter fights, in which the Ishmaelite's hand was against every other. Sometimes in a kind of frenzy he inflicted serious wounds on his fellow-students. At length even the teachers mocked him, and deprived him of his position as captain in the school battalion. The climax of the miserable business was reached when to a taunt that his ancestry was nothing, "his father a wretched tipstaff," Napoleon replied by challenging his tormentor to fight a duel. For this offense he was put in confinement while the instigator went unpunished. It was by the intervention of Marbeuf, who came in person, that his young friend was at length released. Bruised and wounded in spirit, the boy would gladly have shaken the dust of Brienne from his feet, but necessity forbade. Either from the talk Napoleon had with his protector, or through a dramatic but unauthenticated letter purporting to have been written by him to his friends in Corsica and still in existence, Marbeuf learned that the chiefest cause of all the bitterness was the inequality between the pocket allowances of the young French nobles and that of the young Corsican. The kindly general displayed the generosity of a family friend, and gladly increased his gratuity, administering at the same time a smart rebuke to the boy for his readiness to take offense. He likewise introduced his young charge to Mme. de Brienne, whose mansion was near by. This noble woman became a second mother to the lonely child; his vacations and holidays were passed with her; her tenderness softened the rude nature, the more so as she knew the value of tips to a school-boy, and administered them liberally and judiciously. Nor was this the only light among the shadows in the picture of these early school-days. Each of the hundred and fifty pupils had a small garden spot assigned to him. Buonaparte developed a passion for his own, and, annexing by force the neglected plots of his two neighbors, created for himself a retreat, the solitude of which was insured by a thick and lofty hedge planted about it. To this citadel, the sanctity of which he protected with a fury at times half insane, he was wont to retire in the fair weather of all seasons with whatever books he could secure. In the companionship of these he passed happy, pleasant, and fruitful hours. His youthful patriotism had been intensified by the hatred he now felt for French |