eing consulted many years later as to the chance
of enlisting Buonaparte in the cause of the exiled Bourbons, this man is
known to have answered: "It will be lost time to attempt that--I knew
him in his youth--he has taken his side, and he will not change it."

In 1783 Buonaparte was, on the recommendation of his masters, sent from
Brienne to the Royal Military School at Paris; this being an
extraordinary compliment to the genius and proficiency of a boy of
fifteen.[5] Here he spent nearly two years, devoted to his studies. That
he laboured hard, both at Brienne and at Paris, we may judge; for his
after-life left scanty room for book-work, and of the vast quantity of
information which his strong memory ever placed at his disposal, the far
greater proportion must have been accumulated now. He made himself a
first-rate mathematician; he devoured history--his chosen authors being
Plutarch and Tacitus; the former the most simple painter that antiquity
has left us of heroic characters--the latter the profoundest master of
political wisdom. The poems of Ossian were then new to Europe, and
generally received as authentic remains of another age and style of
heroism. The dark and lofty genius which they display, their indistinct
but solemn pictures of heroic passions, love, battle, victory, and
death, were appropriate food for Napoleon's young imagination; and, his
taste being little scrupulous as to minor particulars, Ossian continued
to be through life his favourite poet. While at Paris, he attracted much
notice among those who had access to compare him with his fellows; his
acquirements, among other advantages, introduced him to the familiar
society of the celebrated Abbe Raynal. Napoleon, shortly after entering
the school at Paris, drew up a memorial, which he in person presented to
the superintendents of the establishment. He complained that the mode of
life was too expensive and delicate for "poor gentlemen," and could not
prepare them either for returning to their "modest homes," or for the
hardships of the camp. He proposed that, instead of a regular dinner of
two courses daily, the students should have ammunition bread, and
soldiers' rations, and that they should be compelled to mend and clean
their own stockings and shoes. This memorial is said to have done him no
service at the military school.

He had just completed his sixteenth year when (in August, 1785,) after
being examined by the great Laplace, he obtained his