ier there was more coquetry. She was
a year the senior and lived on her mother's estate some miles from the
town. Rousseau had made fashionable long walks and life in the open.
The frequent visits of Napoleon to Caroline were marked by youthful
gaiety and budding love. They spent many innocent hours in the fields
and garden of the chateau and parted with regret. Their friendship
lasted even after she became Mme. de Bressieux, and they corresponded
intimately for long years. Of his fellow-officers he saw but little,
though he ate regularly at the table of the "Three Pigeons" where the
lieutenants had their mess. This was not because they were distant,
but because he had no genius for good-fellowship, and the habit of
indifference to his comrades had grown strong upon him.

The period of pleasure was not long. It is impossible to judge whether
the little self-indulgence was a weak relapse from an iron purpose or
part of a definite plan. The former is more likely, so abrupt and
apparently conscience-stricken was the return to labor. His
inclinations and his earnest hope were combined in a longing for
Corsica.[12] It was a bitter disappointment that under the army
regulations he must serve a year as second lieutenant before leave
could be granted. As if to compensate himself and still his longings
for home and family, he sought the companionship of a young Corsican
artist named Pontornini, then living at Tournon, a few miles distant.
To this friendship we owe the first authentic portrait of Buonaparte.
It exhibits a striking profile with a well-shaped mouth, and the
expression of gravity is remarkable in a sitter so young. The face
portrays a studious mind. Even during the months from November to
April he had not entirely deserted his favorite studies, and again
Rousseau had been their companion and guide. In a little study of
Corsica, dated the twenty-sixth of April, 1786, the earliest of his
manuscript papers, he refers to the Social Contract of Rousseau with
approval, and the last sentence is: "Thus the Corsicans were able, in
obedience to all the laws of justice, to shake off the yoke of Genoa,
and can do likewise with that of the French. Amen." But in the spring
it was the then famous but since forgotten Abbe Raynal of whom he
became a devotee. At the first blush it seems as if Buonaparte's
studies were irregular and haphazard. It is customary to attribute
slender powers of observation and undefined purposes to childho