the old notions of hollow courtliness and conventional behavior
flourished as never before. In order to enter his boy at Brienne,
Charles de Buonaparte presented a certificate signed by the intendant
and two neighbors, that he could not educate his sons without help
from the King, and was a poor man, having no income except his salary
as assessor. This paper was countersigned by Marbeuf as commanding
general, and to him the request was formally granted. This being the
regular procedure, it is evident that all the young nobles of the
twelve schools enjoying the royal bounty were poor and should have had
little or no pocket money. Perhaps for this very reason, though the
school provided for every expense including pocket money, polished
manners and funds obtained surreptitiously from powerful friends
indifferent to rules, were the things most needed to secure kind
treatment for an entering boy. These were exactly what the young
gentleman scholar from Corsica did not possess. The ignorant and
unworldly Minim fathers could neither foresee nor, if they had
foreseen, alleviate the miseries incident to his arrival under such
conditions.

At Autun Napoleon had at least enjoyed the sympathetic society of his
mild and emotional brother, whose easy-going nature could 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 firmly, 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 a
certain 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. The
building was a gloomy and massive structure of the early eighteenth
century, which stood on a commanding site at the entrance of the town,
flanked by a later addition somewhat more commodious. The dormitory
consisted of two long rows of cells opening on a double corridor,
about a hundred and forty in all: each of these chambers was six feet
square, and contained a folding bed, a pitcher and a basin. The pupil
was locked in at bed-time, his only means of communication being