Napoleon, at the military school of Paris, continued to be studious, and to read almost constantly. He was obedient to the authorities, and defiant to the young aristocrats who surrounded him and looked down on him. The extravagance, indolence, and superciliousness of the noble students, together with the general luxury which prevailed in the establishment, disgusted and enraged a scholar who had no money to spend, and who had come there to study. When he, as head of the State, came to reorganize the educational system of France, he did not forget the lessons taught by his own experience. As a man he adopted a system which avoided all the abuses which as a boy he had denounced.
During this period he may have occasionally visited the Permons in Paris and his sister Elisa, who had been admitted into the State school at St. Cyr. Madame D’Abrantes so relates in her Memoirs; and while there is a difficulty about dates, her narrative is, perhaps, substantially correct. It is a lifelike picture she paints of Napoleon’s gloom at Paris and Elisa’s sorrow at St. Cyr: Napoleon wretched because he could not pay his way among the boys; Elisa miserable because she could not keep step with the girls. Napoleon sulked and denounced luxury; Elisa wept and bewailed her poverty. Elisa was consoled by a tip given by Madame Permon. As for Napoleon, he refused to borrow: “I have no right to add to the burdens of my mother.”
On final examination, August, 1785, Napoleon stood forty-second in his class—not a brilliant mark, certainly, but it sufficed. He received his appointment of sub-lieutenant with joy unbounded. His days of tutelage were over: henceforth he was a man and an officer. Having chosen the artillery service, he set out with Des Mazis, a friend he had made at the military school, to join the regiment of La Fère, which was stationed at Valence. According to one account, Napoleon borrowed money from a cloth merchant to make this journey; according to another, Des Mazis paid the way of both. However that may be, it seems that when the young officers reached Lyons, a gay city of the south, they relaxed the rigors of military discipline to such an extent that their money all vanished. The remainder of the distance to Valence was made on foot.
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Those biographers who devote their lives to defaming Napoleon, lay stress on the alleged fact that he was educated by the King. In becoming an adherent of the Revolution, these writers say that he betrayed an amount of moral obliquity quite appalling. Louis XVI. was king while Napoleon was at Brienne, and the suggestion that Napoleon owed a debt of gratitude to Louis XVI. is amusing. The tax-payers, the people, educated Napoleon; and whatever debt of gratitude he owed, he owed to them. In going with the Revolution, he went with those who had paid his schooling. He himself drew this distinction at the time. When M. Demetrius Permon rebuked him for criticising royalty, throwing the alleged debt of gratitude in his teeth, the boy replied, “The State educates me; not the King.”
Of course Permon could not admit the distinction, he being a noble of the Old Order; nor can biographers who write in the interest of modern Toryism admit it. But the distinction is there, nevertheless; the boy saw it, and so does impartial history.
CHAPTER III
Napoleon carried with him to his new home a letter of introduction from the Bishop of Autun to the ex-Abbot of St. Ruffe, and with this leverage he made his way into the best society of Valence. For the first time circumstances were favorable to him, and the good effects of the change were at once evident. Occupying a better place in life than before, he was more contented, more sociable. He mingled with the people about him, and made friends. No longer a waif, a charity boy from abroad, thrust among other boys who looked down upon him as a social inferior, he was now an officer of State, housed, fed, clothed, salaried at the public expense. No longer under the wheels, he held a front seat in that wondrous vehicle which men call government, and in which a few so comfortably ride while the many so contentedly wear harness and pull. No longer subject to everybody’s orders, Napoleon had become one of the masters in God’s world here below, and could issue orders himself. Glorious change! And the sun began to look bright to “Lieutenant Bonaparte of the King’s Royal Academy.” He cultivated himself and others socially. He found some congenial spirits among the elderly men of the place; also some among the young women. In the hours not spent in study, and not claimed by his duties, he could be found chatting at the coffee-house, strolling with brother officers, dancing at the neighborhood balls, and playing the beau amid the belles of this high provincial circle.
To one of these young ladies, according to tradition and his own statement, he lost his heart. But when we seek to know something more definite, tradition and his own statements differ. If we are to accept his version, the courtship led to nothing beyond a few promenades, and the eating of cherries together in the early morning. According to the local tradition, however, he proposed and was rejected. Her parents were local aristocrats, and had so little confidence in the future of the little officer that they married their girl by preference to a M. de Bressieux—a good, safe, commonplace gentleman of the province. In after years the lady reminded Napoleon of their early friendship, and he at once made generous provision for both herself and husband.