Of temporal discipline
he need have had no fear, since, it was perforce relaxed while he was
master of his solitude; as for the lack of funds, history has shown
that this never interfered with the fulfilment of Napoleon's hopes,
and hence the belief that the beautiful pictures, drawn by historians
and painted by masters of the brush, of Napoleon in solitude should
be revised to include a few accessories, drawn from such portions of
Parisian life as will readily suggest themselves.
In his studies, however, Napoleon ranked high. His mathematical
abilities were so marked that it was stated that he could square the
circle with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back.
"The only circle I could not square at that time," said he, "was the
family circle, being insufficiently provided with income to do so. I
might have succeeded better had not Joseph's appetite grown too fast
for the strength of my pocket; that was the only respect, however, in
which I ever had any difficulty in keeping up with my dear elder
brother." It was here, too, that he learned the inestimably
important military fact that the shortest distance between two points
is in a straight line; and that he had fully mastered that fact was
often painfully evident to such of his schoolmates as seemed to force
him to measure with his right arm the distance between his shoulder
and the ends of their noses.
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