Ah! my dear Madame Junot," he added, giving her ear a delicate pinch,
"those were the days when life seemed worth the living--when one of a
taciturn nature and prone to irritability could find real pleasure in
existence. Oh to be unknown again!"
And then, Madame Junot's husband having entered the room, the Emperor
once more relapsed into a moody silence.
But to return to Brienne. Napoleon soon found that there is a gulf
measurable by no calculable distance between existence as the
dominating force of a family and life as a new boy at a boarding-
school. He found his position reversed, and he began for the first
time in his life to appreciate the virtues of his brother Joseph. He
who had been the victorious general crossing the Alps now found
himself the Alp, with a dozen victorious generals crossing him; he
who had been the gunner was now the target, and his present inability
to express his feelings in language which his tormentors could
understand, for he had not yet mastered the French tongue, kept him
in a state of being which may well be termed volcanic.
"I simply raged within in those days," Napoleon once said to Las
Casas.
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