ich had a very droll
appearance--that was his boots. They were so high and wide that his
thin little legs seemed buried in their amplitude. Young people are
always ready to observe anything ridiculous, and as soon as my sister
and I saw Napoleon enter the drawing-room, we burst into a loud fit of
laughter. Bonaparte could not relish a joke; and when he found himself
the object of merriment he grew angry. My sister, who was some years
older than I, told him that since he wore a sword he ought to be
gallant to ladies, and, instead of being angry, should be happy that
they joked with him.

"'You are nothing but a child, a little school-girl,' said Napoleon, in
a tone of contempt.

"Cecile, who was twelve or thirteen years of age, was highly indignant
at being called a child, and she hastily resented the affront by
replying to Bonaparte, 'And you are nothing but a Puss in Boots!'"

Napoleon at this time was hard put to it to keep up appearances as an
officer, on his slender income. His father had passed away, and he
could not expect further help from home. He was now his mother's
oldest adviser, and we find him writing her sage letters which sound
like a man of forty. Indeed, his brain matured early. At fourteen he
wrote and spoke like a man.

He was subject to fits of depression and melancholy, and even thoughts
of suicide--but these, fortunately, were passing whims, and gradually
the resolute nature he was to evince in later years began to assert
itself. A favorite motto with him, as a man, was: "The truest wisdom
is a resolute determination," and already he was putting it into
practice.

Soon after obtaining his commission, he left school on his first
assignment of active duty. Some riots had broken out at Lyons, and his
regiment of artillery was sent there. But things speedily quieted
down, leaving to him the monotony of garrison life. In telling about
it afterward he remarked:

"When I entered the service I found garrison life tedious. I began
reading novels, and that kind of reading proved interesting. I made an
attempt at writing some; this task gave range to my imagination. It
took hold of my knowledge of positive facts, and often I found
amusement in giving myself up to dreams in order to test them later by
the standard of my reasoning powers. I transported myself in thought
to an ideal world, and I sought to discover wherein lay the precise
difference between that and the world in which I l