Such was the young Napoleon at twenty-three. Almost immediately he was made general of brigade, and was looked upon as one of the coming defenders of the French Republic.
He went to Paris, was loaded with honors, and given post after post in the service of his country. For a time he proved a great defender of his people, for a time he served the Republic as no other man could; but when defense was no longer needed he could not sheathe his sword, he had to use it for attack whether the cause were just or not. As he won victory after victory and tasted power he discarded even the Republic that had made him, and placed himself upon the throne as Emperor.
That same love of power which had made him was also his undoing. He could not rest content with what he had. As he had predicted to Monsieur Pichegru that afternoon at Brienne he would have his own way, and very much as he had treated his schoolfellows there he later grew to treat the nations of Europe. As a result they, like his playfellows, combined against him, and sent him down finally among the privates.
XV
Walter Scott
The Boy of the Canongate: 1771-1832
The business office of a Scotch solicitor is not an especially cheerful place at any time, and the interior of such a room looked particularly cheerless on a late winter afternoon in Edinburgh in 1786. A boy of fifteen sat on a high stool at an old oak desk, and watched the snow falling in the street. Occasionally he could see people passing the windows: men and women wrapped to their ears in plaid shawls, for the wind whistled down the street so loudly that the boy could hear it, and the cold was bitter.
The boy looked through the window until he almost felt the chill himself, and then, to keep warm, held his head in his hands and fastened his eyes on the big, heavy-leaved book in front of him, which bore the unappealing title, Erskine's "Institutes." The type was fine, and the young student had to read each line a dozen times before he could understand it. Sometimes his eyes would involuntarily close and he would doze a few moments, only to wake with a start to look quickly at another desk near the fire where his father sat steadily writing, and then to a table in the corner where a very old man was always sorting papers.
The winter light grew dim, so dim that the boy could no longer see to read. He closed the book with a bang.