nventional sins--only they do not get immortalized in the sober pages
of history!

He next went to a more advanced day school, and then to a seminary
conducted by the Abbe Recco. While not a prize student, he was fond of
geography, history, and mathematics, and even as a lad his wonderful
memory for names and dates began to assert itself. He had what is
known as a photographic mind. When once it had received an impression,
the record was permanent.

One other bent early asserted itself. It was for warlike scenes. The
boy not only read greedily of Caesar and Alexander and other great
conquerors of the past--he drew pictures on the walls, of regiments of
soldiers, which in fancy he commanded.

His brother Joseph would jeer, and then there was more trouble. Joseph
generally got the worst of it both bodily and mentally. No sooner was
the fight over, than the conqueror made good his vantage.

"I went to complain before he had time to recover from his confusion.
I had need to be on the alert. Our mother would have repressed my
warlike humor, she would not have put up with my caprices. Her
tenderness was allied with severity. She punished, rewarded all alike;
the good, the bad, nothing escaped her. My father, a man of sense, but
too fond of pleasure to pay much attention to our infancy, sometimes
attempted to excuse our faults. 'Let them alone,' she replied; 'it is
not your business, it is I who must look after them.'"

The father, a man of happy-go-lucky disposition, would shrug his
shoulders and laugh. But when it came to choosing a profession for the
two boys, he did not hesitate. Joseph, the brow-beaten, should become
a priest, he said, while Napoleon must study soldiering--which decision
suited at least one of the boys to a T.

Napoleon was only nine years old when this decision was made, but very
precocious. He talked and reasoned like a boy five years older. His
unruly disposition probably hastened the choice as well. His parents
felt that a school where there was stern discipline would be the best
thing for him. Accordingly his father obtained for him an appointment
to one of the royal military schools; and on April 23, 1779, he was
formally enrolled at Brienne, France, as a student. The die was cast.
He was to become a soldier.

The next five years, however, were by no means a joyous period in his
life. In the first months he felt like "a fish out of water"; nor did
he try very hard to adap