Napoleon carried with him to his new home a letter of introduction from the Bishop of Autun to the ex-Abbot of St. Ruffe, and with this leverage he made his way into the best society of Valence. For the first time circumstances were favorable to him, and the good effects of the change were at once evident. Occupying a better place in life than before, he was more contented, more sociable. He mingled with the people about him, and made friends. No longer a waif, a charity boy from abroad, thrust among other boys who looked down upon him as a social inferior, he was now an officer of State, housed, fed, clothed, salaried at the public expense. No longer under the wheels, he held a front seat in that wondrous vehicle which men call government, and in which a few so comfortably ride while the many so contentedly wear harness and pull. No longer subject to everybody’s orders, Napoleon had become one of the masters in God’s world here below, and could issue orders himself. Glorious change! And the sun began to look bright to “Lieutenant Bonaparte of the King’s Royal Academy.” He cultivated himself and others socially. He found some congenial spirits among the elderly men of the place; also some among the young women. In the hours not spent in study, and not claimed by his duties, he could be found chatting at the coffee-house, strolling with brother officers, dancing at the neighborhood balls, and playing the beau amid the belles of this high provincial circle.

To one of these young ladies, according to tradition and his own statement, he lost his heart. But when we seek to know something more definite, tradition and his own statements differ. If we are to accept his version, the courtship led to nothing beyond a few promenades, and the eating of cherries together in the early morning. According to the local tradition, however, he proposed and was rejected. Her parents were local aristocrats, and had so little confidence in the future of the little officer that they married their girl by preference to a M. de Bressieux—a good, safe, commonplace gentleman of the province. In after years the lady reminded Napoleon of their early friendship, and he at once made generous provision for both herself and husband.

If possible, Napoleon studied more diligently at Valence than at Brienne. Plutarch’s Lives and CÆsar’s Commentaries he had already mastered while a child; Rousseau had opened a new world of ideas to him in Paris: he now continued his historical studies by reading Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus. Anything relating to India, China, Arabia, had a peculiar charm for him. Next he learned all he could of Germany and England. French history he studied minutely, striving to exhaust information on the subject. In his researches he was not content merely with ordinary historical data: he sought to understand the secret meaning of events, and the origin of institutions. He studied legislation, statistics, the history of the Church, especially the relation of the Church to the State. Likewise he read the masterpieces of French literature and the critical judgments which had been passed upon them. Novels he did not disdain, and for poetry of the heroic cast he had a great fondness.

He read also the works of Voltaire, Necker, Filangieri, and Adam Smith. With Napoleon to read was to study. He made copious notes, and these notes prove that he bent every faculty of his mind to the book in hand. He analyzed, commented, weighed statements in the balance of his own judgment—in short, doing everything necessary to the complete mastery of the subject. A paper on which he jotted down at that time his ideas of the relations between Church and State appear to show that he had reached at that time the conclusions he afterward embodied in the Concordat. Rousseau he studied again, but the book which seems to have taken his fancy more than any other was the AbbÉ Raynal’s famous History of the Institutions and Commerce of the Europeans in the Two Indies. This book was a miscellany of essays and extracts treating of superstition, tyranny, etc., and predicting that a revolution was at hand in France if abuses were not reformed.

How was it that Napoleon, with his meagre salary, could command so many costly books? A recent biographer patly states that he “subscribed to a public library.” This may be true, but Napoleon himself explained to an audience of kings and princes at Erfurth, in 1808, that he was indebted to the kindness of one Marcus Aurelius, a rich bookseller, “a most obliging man who placed his books at my service.”

The personal appearance of the young lieutenant was not imposing. He was short, painfully thin, and awkward. His legs were so much too small for his boots that he looked ridiculous—at least to one young lady, who nicknamed him “Puss in Boots.” He wore immense “dog’s ears,” which fell to his shoulders, and this style of wearing the hair gave his dark Italian face a rather sinister look, impressing a lady acquaintance with the thought that he would not be the kind of man one would like to meet near a wood at night. Generally he was silent, wrapped in his own thoughts; but when he spoke, his ideas were striking and his expressions energetic. He rather affected the laconic, oracular style, and his attitude was somewhat that of a man posing for effect. In familiar social intercourse he was different. His smile became winning, his voice soft and tender, and his magnetism irresistible. He loved to joke others and play little pranks with them; but he could not relish a joke at his own expense, nor did he encourage familiarity. He had none of the brag, bluster, or roughness of the soldier about him, but in a quiet way he was imperious, self-confident, self-sufficient. So little did his appearance then, or at any other time, conform to the popular ideal of the soldier, that one old grenadier of the Bourbon armies, on having Napoleon pointed out to him, after the Italian campaign, could not believe such a man could possibly be a great warrior. “That a general!” said the veteran with contempt; “why, when he walks he does not even step out with the right foot first!”

Extremely egotistic he was, and so remained to his last hour. He had no reverence, looked for fact in all directions, had almost unerring judgment, and believed himself superior to his fellow-students, to his teachers, and to his brother officers. At the age of fifteen he was giving advice to his father—very sound advice, too. At that early age he had taken family responsibilities upon his shoulders, and was gravely disposing of Joseph and Lucien. In a remarkable letter he elaborately analyzed Joseph’s character, and reached the conclusion that he was an amiable nonentity, fit only for society. It had been well for Napoleon if he had always remembered this, and acted upon it.

In August, 1786, Napoleon spent a short time in Lyons. After this he was perhaps sent to Douay in Flanders, though he himself has written that on September 1, 1786, he obtained leave of absence and set out for Corsica, which he reached on the fifteenth of the same month.

Napoleon found the condition of the family greatly changed. Charles Bonaparte had died in France in February, 1785. General Marbeuf, also, was dead. The French officials were not now so friendly to the Bonapartes. Madame Letitia had been growing mulberry trees in order to obtain the governmental bounty—the government being intent upon building up the silk industry. Madame Bonaparte had apparently been giving more thought to the bounty than to the trees, and the result was that the officials had refused payment. Hence the supply of cash in the household was cut down to Napoleon’s salary (about $225), and such sums as could be teased out of the rich uncle—the miserly archdeacon. Desperately worried as he must have been by the condition of the family finances, Napoleon put a bold face upon it, strutting about town so complacently that he gave much offence to the local magnates—the town oracles whose kind words are not easily won by the neighborhood boys who have gone to distant colleges for an education and have returned for inspection and approval. To the sidewalk critics, who only nine years ago had jeered at the slovenly lad and his girl sweetheart, Napoleon’s style of walk and talk may have seemed that of inflated self-conceit.

Like a good son, Napoleon exerted himself to the utmost in behalf of his mother, making every effort to have the mulberry bounty paid, and to wring revenue out of the family property. He met with no success in either direction, though it appears that he prevailed upon the local authorities to grant some slight favor to the family. At one time Madame Letitia was reduced to the necessity of doing all her housework with her own hands.

At Elba, the Emperor related a story which belongs to this period of his life. He said that one day his mother’s mother was hobbling along the street in Ajaccio, and that he and Pauline followed the old lady, and mimicked her. Their grandmother, happening to turn, caught them in the act. She complained to Madame Letitia. Pauline was at once “spanked” and disposed of; Napoleon, who was rigged out in regimentals, could not be handled. His mother bided her time. Next day, when her son was off his guard, she cried, “Quick, Napoleon! You are invited to dine with the governor!” He ran up to his room to change clothing—she quietly followed. When she judged that the proper time had come, she rushed into the room, seized her undressed hero before he guessed her purpose, laid him across the maternal knees, and belabored him earnestly with the flat of her hand.

In October, 1787, Napoleon was again in Paris, petitioning the government in behalf of his mother, and seeking to have his furlough extended. Failing as to his mother, succeeding as to himself, he was back home in January, 1788, and remained there until June of the same year. While in Corsica, Napoleon frequently dined with brother officers in the French army. Between him and them, however, there was little congeniality. He was hotly Paolist, and his talk was either of Corsican independence or of topics historical and governmental. His brother officers did not enjoy these conversations. His patriotism offended; his learning bored them. What did the average French officer of that day know or care about history and the science of government? The upshot of such a dinner-party usually was that Napoleon got into a wrangle with that one of the officers who imagined he knew something of the subject, while the others, who honestly realized that they did not, would walk off in disgust. “My comrades, like myself,” says M. de Renain, one of the officers in question, “lost patience with what we considered ridiculous stuff and pedantry.”

So far did Napoleon carry his patriotic sentiments that he rather plainly threatened to take sides with the Corsicans if any collision should occur between the French and his countrymen. Upon this, one of the officers who disliked him asked sharply, “Would you draw your sword against the soldiers of the King?”

Napoleon, dressed in the King’s uniform, had the good sense to remain silent. The officers were offended at his tone, and, says Renain, “This is the last time he did me the honor of dining with me.”

Not for a day had Napoleon neglected his books. To escape the household noises, he went to the attic, and there pursued his studies. Far and wide ranged his restless mind, from the exact sciences, dry and heavy, to Plato and Ossian, rich in suggestions to the most opulent imagination nature ever gave a practical man. To the very last, Napoleon remained half mystic; and when he stood in the storm the night before Waterloo, and cast into the darkness the words, “We are agreed”; or when he remained silent for hours at St. Helena watching the vast wings of the mist whirl, and turn, and soar around the summit of the bleak, barren mountain of rock, we feel that if pens were there to trace his thought, Ossian would seem to live again. From his youth up the most striking characteristic of his mind was its enormous range; its wide sweep from the pettiest, prosiest details of fact to the sublimest dreams and the most chimerical fancies. Not wholly satisfied with reading and commentary, he strove to compose. Under the Bourbons, his outlook in the army was not promising. He might hope, after many tedious years of garrison service, to become a captain; after that it would be a miracle if he rose higher. Hence his lack of interest in the routine work of a soldier, and hence his ambition to become an author. He wrote a story called The Count of Essex, also a novel founded on Corsican life, and pulsing with hatred of France. Another story which he called The Masked Prophet, is the same which Moore afterward used in The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.

His greatest exertions, however, were spent upon the History of Corsica. To this work he clung with a tenacity of purpose that is touching. All the long, tragic story of Corsica seems to have run like fire in the boy’s veins, and the heroes of his country—Paoli, Sampiero, Della Rocca—seemed to him to be as great as the men of antiquity, as perhaps they were. Therefore, the young man wrote and rewrote, trying to get the book properly written, his thoughts properly expressed. He had turned to Raynal, as we have seen, and the AbbÉ had kindly said, “Search further, and write it over.” And Napoleon had done so. At least three times he had recast the entire book. He sought the approval of a former teacher, Dupuy; he sent “copy” to Paoli. Dupuy had a poor opinion of the performance; and Paoli told him flatly he was too young to write history. But Napoleon persevered, finished the work, and eagerly sought publishers. Alas! the publishers shook their heads. Finally, at Paris was found a bold adventurer in the realm of book-making, who was willing to undertake half the cost if the author would furnish the other half. But for one reason or another the book was never published.

The passionate earnestness with which Napoleon toiled at his book on Corsican history, the intense sympathy with which he studied the lives of Corsican heroes, the fiery wrath he nursed against those who had stricken down Corsican liberties, were but so many evidences of the set purpose of his youth—to free his country, to give it independence. There is no doubt that the one consuming ambition of these early years was as pure as it was great: he would do what Sampiero and Paoli had failed to do—he would achieve the independence of Corsica!

Napoleon rejoined his regiment at Auxonne at the end of May, 1788. That he did so with reluctance is apparent from the manner in which he had distorted facts to obtain extension of his furlough. Garrison duty had no charms for him; the dull drudgery of daily routine became almost insupportable. It appears that he was put under arrest for the unsatisfactory manner in which he had superintended some work on the fortifications. When off duty he gave his time to his books. He became ill, and wrote to his mother, “I have no resource but work. I dress but once in eight days. I sleep but little, and take but one meal a day.” Under this regimen of no exercise, hard work, and little sleep he came near dying.

In September, 1789, came another furlough, and the wan-looking lieutenant turned his face homeward. In passing through Marseilles he paid his respects to the AbbÉ Raynal.