Likewise he abhorred dancing.
"Away with dancing men!" he cried, impatiently, at one time when in the height of his power, to his Minister of War. "Suppose when I was crossing the Alps my soldiers had been of your dancing sort. How far would I have got if every time the band played a two-step my grenadiers had dropped their guns to pirouette over those snow-white wastes? Let the diplomats do the dancing. For soldiers give me men to whom the polka is a closed book and the waltz an abomination."
Holding these views, he naturally failed to win the sympathy of his fellows at the Paris school who, young nobles for the most part, could not understand his point of view. So, having nothing else to do, he applied himself solely to his studies and to reflection, and it was the happiest moment of his life up to that time when, having passed his examinations for entrance to the regular army, he received his commission as a second lieutenant.
"Now we're off!" he said to himself, as he surveyed himself in the mirror, after donning his uniform.
"It does not set very well in the back," remarked one of the maids of the pension in which he lived, glancing in at the door.
"It does not matter," returned Bonaparte, loftily. "As long as it sets well in front I'm satisfied; for you should know, madame, that a true soldier never shows his back, and that is the kind of a military person I am. A false front would do for me. I am no tin soldier, which in after-years it will interest you to remember. When you are writing your memoirs this will make an interesting anecdote."
From this it is to be inferred that at this time he had no thought of Moscow. Immediately after his appointment Bonaparte repaired to Valence, where his regiment was stationed and where he formed a strong attachment for the young daughter of Madame du Colombier, with whom, history records, he ate cherries before breakfast. This was his sole dissipation at that time, but his felicity was soon to be interrupted. His regiment was ordered to Lyons, and Bonaparte and his love were parted.
"Duty calls me, my dear," he said, on leaving her. "I would stay if I could, but I can't, and, on the whole, it is just as well. If I stayed I should marry you, and that would never do. You cannot support me, nor I you. We cannot live on cherries, and as yet my allowance is an ingrowing one—which is to say that it goes from me to my parent, and not from my parent to me. Therefore, my only love, farewell. Marry some one else. There are plenty of men who are fond of cherries before breakfast, and there is no reason why one so attractive as you should not find a lover."
The unhappy girl was silent for a moment. Then, with an ill- suppressed sob, she bade him go.
"You are right, Napoleon," she said. "Go. Go where duty calls you, and if you get tired of Lyons—"