The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1895-03-23

finishing ground for a young military as
pirant. L'Ecole Militaire dc Paris held
the relation to that of Brienne and the
others of college to academy. The curric-
ulum was moro ample and the methods
more rational in the first than those pur-
sued in tho provincial institutions. Here
the academic training of Napoleon Bona
parte-as that Of his younger brother Lu-
Glen afterwards-was completed. From
this school he was to be delivered, as if by
a second birth, to the world.
The social character of Napoleon now
began to show itself more distinctly. Back
ut Bricnne he had been introduced by
General Marhnuf to some private fam
lilies of distinction. Them he impressed as
a peculiar, forceful and solitary genius,
more capable of heroic dreams and boyiSh
monologuc than of polite conversation or
social amenities. Going to Paris, his &C
quaintanCC was somewhat enlarged. Mar
bnuf's nephew, the Bishop of Autun, now
lived at Versailles; and that worthy was
glad, after tho lapse of five years, to re-
cciye his former pupil, greatly grown in
intellect and person, but virtually the
same in demCanor. Elise, the sister of
Bonaparte, had meanwhile been brought
out from Corsica, and was now ii member
of the Royal School for Girls at Saint-Cyr.
SO that the young man had now a few
friends and some social advantages.
For the rest, he pursued in Paris the
same self-CentCrcd life as at Brienne. He
was a hard student-in his way. He still
disprized the polite branches of education
in favor of the exact science and geog-
raphy. In humane inquiry, his sole en-
deayOr vas to master History. His study,
however, in this field did not reach histor-
ical generalization or IA broad philosophy.
He stopped with the individual. He dwelt
with interest and enthusiasm upon the
lives of great men. Plutarch he knew al
most by heart. The well known stories
which in that ago passed for history he
come with the passion of a zealot.
In after life, the peculiar effect of this
discipline was manifested in all of Napo.
Icons work and policy. Ont of his history
proper he branched in only one direction
politics. He became rather expert in the
political p%latitudcs and persiflage of the
times. To the end of his life he was never
capable of high and abstract views; but he
knew all special things as if by intuition.
His mind flashed out, lightnins-like, in
this direction and in that; the blaze of II
illumined many n dark and b~lood-splashed
place; but from that prodigious intellect
there was never diifused a broad and uni
versal light. Much of this must be attrib
uted to his Unborn character; and some
thing to the manner of his education.
We must hero allow also for the reac
tionary influence of Paris itself on a great
genius in boyhood. Napoleon saw ant
felt Paris for ten months, in his sixteenth
year. 1t was a revelation; but he seems
not to have been greatly affected by it. Sc
much was he concentrated OF himself-sC
strongly was the concept of a destiny
struggling to form itself within him
that even the glare, the magnificence, the
charm, the seductive vices, of the metrop
oils were hardly noticed by the CorsicaI
in his onward course.
The year 1885 was in all respects crit
ical to Bonaparte. His course at the Mill
tary School ended with August of tina
year. He was admitted to his final exami
nation almost precisely at his sixteenth
birthday. Nearly six months before thiI
time his father, who had found a tempo
rary residence at Montpelier, came to tn,
final scene. The visionary and ~unsuccess
full Buonaparte had discovered a refug,
for himself at the chateau of Madame Per
mon, mother of the Duchess d'Abrante
of great fame. There, on the gath of Feb
ruary, he expired, of a chronic malady
perhaps cancer of the stOmach-most fata
premonition of what should happen to hi
famous Son thirty-six years afterwards
AT his deathbed were his eldest son 10
seph and that other Joseph who shout,
become the Cardinal Fesch. The latter
now n priest, would fain administer som
consolation of religion to the dying mar
but Charles Bonaparte would not accep
the solace, -preferring to die, as he ha,
lived, in absolute unbelief.
Hard was this stroke of death on tn
members of Buonaparte's family. Fror
the time of his union with L.etitia Rame
lino-a period of twenty years-thirtee
children had been born. Eight of the
We're living; three were in France, an
five with the mother in Aiaccio. All WEI
at the door of penury. 1t is a law of nj
Gure and of mar that every mother WI
bears thirteen children is a heroine; bu
Madame de Buonaparte had now to e
into the fields and plant mulberry tree
for a living! Marbnuf finally prevaile
with the authorities to make Joseph Boz
aparte also 1--WE will now drop the Italia
form Buonaparte) "A military pensionel
But the fathers death and Napoleon
protest countervailed the project, and il
seph was doomed to remain a cadet of til
Church. For Lucien, who developed
passion for polite studies and wished to |
a priest, a scholarship was obtained fl
the school at Brienne. Such is the pc
versity of fate. As to Napoleon, it W,
agreed that instead of going into the nav,
as Keralio had recommended and as Ma