Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/274

244 the sons of poor nobles—vain and indolent—and they love to tease the timid boy.

"I am tired of poverty and the jeers of insolent scholars. If fortune refuses to smile upon me, take me from Brienne, and make me if you will a mechanic." In spite of this letter, the father wisely keeps the little boy at Brienne, and gradually he makes friends, especially among the teachers.

"I have seen a spark here which cannot be too carefully cultivated," writes the aged Chevalier de Keralio, an inspector of the school, who is anxious to have Napoleon sent to the military school at Paris.

Our pictures are now painted in somewhat brighter colors.

For although at Paris the young Napoleon is not perfectly contented, he knows that he is on the way to a modest independence. He is surrounded by foolish young men with whose extravagance he cannot keep up. But only his sympathetic sister Elizabeth at St. Cyr hears him complain of the difficulties that beset him.

Napoleon is naturally happier when at the early age of sixteen he finds himself a second