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CHAPTER III: PARIS--VALENCE--LYONS--CORSICA
1785-1793
The feeling among the larger boys at Brienne at Napoleon's departure
was much the same as that experienced by Joseph when his soon to-be-
famous brother departed from Corsica. The smaller boys regretted his
departure, since it had been one of their greatest pleasures to watch
Napoleon disciplining the upper classmen, but Bonaparte was as glad
to go as the elders were to have him.
"Brienne is good enough in its way," said he; "but what's the use of
fighting children? It's merely a waste of time cracking a
youngster's skull with a snowball when you can go out into the real
world and let daylight into a man's whole system with a few ounces of
grape-shot."
He had watched developments at Paris, too, with the keenest interest,
and was sufficiently far-seeing to know that the troubles of the King
and Queen and their aristocratic friends boded well for a man fond of
a military life who had sense enough to be on the right side. That
it took an abnormal degree of intelligence to know which was the
right side in those troublous days he also realized, and hence he
cultivated that taciturnity and proneness to irritability which we
have already mentioned.
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