"Why, sire, he is the best mathematician in the school," was the reply.
"Ah, I have always heard it remarked and I have always believed, that none but a fool could learn mathematics!"
"It would be curious," said Napoleon, who related this anecdote when he was Emperor, "to know whether M. Bauer lived long enough to ascertain my real character, and to enjoy the confirmation of his own judgment."
Napoleon had not been in the Military School of Paris a year,—during which time his father had died,—and had barely completed his sixteenth year, when he successfully passed the examination, in August 1785,—for a commission in a regiment of artillery.
On September 1st the decree was signed which assigned Bonaparte as Second-Lieutenant in the company of bombardiers of the regiment of La Fere garrisoned at Valence. At the time of the examination there were thirty-six vacant places. M. de Feralio, one of the professors of the military school charged with this examination, is said to have inscribed on the margin, opposite to the signature of Napoleon, the following: "A Corsican by character and by birth. If favored by circumstances this young man will rise high." This professor was very fond of his young pupil, and when at school is said to have occasionally supplied him with pocket money. After his death Napoleon granted a handsome pension to his widow.
Napoleon's corps was at Valence when he joined it. Arriving there he was an occasional frequenter of the drawing room of Madame du Colombier, and it is said he made love to her daughter; but when not so engaged, he was devoted to his military studies, and read frequently from the Lives of Plutarch, a volume of which he generally carried about him. He also occupied himself in writing a "History of Corsica" which, when completed, the Abbe Raynal and other friends praised very highly; but he was unable to find a publisher for it.
At Valence Napoleon found the officers of his regiment divided, as all the world then was, into two parties; the lovers of the French monarchy, and those who desired its overthrow. Napoleon openly sided with the latter. "Had I been a general," said he, in the evening of his life, "I might have adhered to the king; being a subaltern I joined the patriots."
In the beginning of 1792 Napoleon became captain of artillery, unattached, and happening to be in Paris, witnessed the lamentable scenes of the 20th of June, when the revolutionary mob stormed the Tuileries, and Louis XVI. and his family, after undergoing innumerable insults and degradations, with the utmost difficulty preserved their lives. As he was strolling about with Bourrienne he saw the mob, numbering between five and six thousand, ragged and ridiculously armed, coming from the outskirts and making for the Tuileries. "Let us follow these scoundrels," he said. They went with the crowd into the garden before the palace, and when the king appeared at one of the windows on the balcony, surrounded by Revolutionists, and with the red cap of liberty, the emblem of the Jacobins, on his head, Napoleon could no longer suppress his contempt and indignation. "Poor driveller!" said he, loud enough to be heard by those near him; "how could he suffer this rabble to enter? If he had swept away five or six hundred with his cannon, the rest would be running yet!" Napoleon always abhorred anarchy. He said there was no remedy for mobs but grape-shot, and believed thoroughly in the theory of shooting first and listening to peace negotiations afterwards.