ailor." The following year when another inspector
visited the school, he added a note that was more accurate. "Character
masterful, impetuous and headstrong"; and he decided that Napoleon
should enter the Military School at Paris.

Accordingly, in the Fall of 1784, he bade Brienne farewell without
regrets on either side, and turned his face toward the capital. No one
seeing this slender, almost dwarfed, figure with the thin face, high
cheekbones and sunken, inquiring eyes, would ever have imagined that
Paris was welcoming her future lord. History holds strange secrets
within her pages.

At the Military School, he chose the artillery as his particular branch
of service. To what good use he put his study of the field guns, we
find evidence in his first appearance on the field of actual warfare.
At the outset he made few friends; it seemed to be the bitter
experience of Brienne all over again. The trouble was that he was one
of the students being educated at the State's expense--a perfectly
proper system, which we ourselves follow at West Point and Annapolis.
But many of these French students came of wealthy families and, like
young prigs, looked down upon the King's scholars as "charity
patients." Napoleon justly resented this; and even went so far as to
indite a memorial against this condition of affairs at Brienne--which
did not tend to enhance his popularity.

However he did begin to find himself in a social way. With maturer
years and a broader outlook he began to emerge from his shell. He made
a few good friends, one or two being among the gentler sex. One lady
in particular, Madame de Colombier, took a fancy to this gawky country
lad and frequently invited him to her home in the country. Her
daughter, Caroline, was also a welcome friend, and the memory of those
simple but pleasant hours remained with him all his life as a ray of
sunshine among the all-too-gloomy days of youth.

"We were the most innocent creatures imaginable," he says. "We
contrived little meetings together. I well remember one which took
place on a midsummer morning, just as daylight was beginning to dawn.
It will scarcely be believed that all our happiness consisted in eating
cherries together."

The young artillery student--now a lieutenant--also visited the
Permons; and Madame Junot, then a little girl, gives a clever cartoon
of him as he appeared in full regimentals at the age of sixteen.

"There was one part of his dress wh