Page:Entertaining history of the early years of General Bonaparte (1).pdf/5

 eſtabliſhments, while the utmoſt attention was paid to youthful inſtruction, the agreeable was not forgotten that, by rendering ſcienee amiable, the youth might not contract, that dryneſs of manner which too frequently, accompanies profound erudition.

It was in one of theſe ſchools that the Count de Marbeouf was deſirous to place the young Bonaparte. Corſica, ſince being united to France, has obtained for its inhabitants, among other privileges that of ſharing the royal-beneficenee; ſo that the Count ſhall ſo difficulty to procure for his protege the place, of one of the Eleves du Roi.

The Marechat de Segur, then Miniſter of War, and charged with the department of Military Schools, placed Bonaparte in that of Brienne, in Champange; in which he entered, I believe, in the beginning of the year 1779.

Is was about fifteen or eighteen months afterwards that my father, availing himſelf of the right which all ſtrangers of family had to educate their children in theſe royal inſtitutions ſend me there to begin my education. Different in temper and character, and younger than Bonaparte, I formed no particular friendſhip with him; but living under the ſame rooſ, and ſharing the ſame exerciſes, I remarked him early, as ſomething extraordinary, perceiving not one, among one hundred and fifty youths, who in the leaſt reſembled him, either