ANECDOTES OF NAPOLEON. 309 



1 knew how useless it was to reason with him. I merely promised 

 to bring him the sum he wanted the next day but one after, which, 

 thanks to my uncle, I was enabled to do. 



Never was a loan more cordially made nor more ungraciously 

 received. Instead of giving me friendly thanks Napoleon only 

 said, •« You shall be reimbursed in a month." " Why fix a period?" 

 replied I. "Are you hurt that for a moment smiles more on me 

 than you.'' " Yes," hastily answer my harsh friend, " Dangeais, I 

 would give double this sum not to have the humiliation of borrowing 

 it from you. It is a tittle of pre-eminence over me.'' "What! do 

 you believe me capable ?'' " I believe you to be a man, and con- 

 sequently susceptible of profiting by the advantages which are 

 offered to you. If, during this month, any difference should arise 

 between us, you would say to yourself in secret, if indeed you did not 

 say it aloud, 'He was too happy that I was willing to lend him those 

 twenty pistoles,'" " A bad manner of thinking ; it is painting society 

 with a pencil of iron." "It is painting it such as it is. Look at my re- 

 latives; what are they to me? — selfish and pitiless. But, if they for- 

 get me, I am about to recal myself to their remembrance in a 

 terrible manner." Saying this, Buonaparte quitted me and hastened 

 to his chamber to write to his father. 



Some street pamphleteers have asserted that Napoleon did not 

 know a word of French, and was utterly ignorant of the principles 

 of our orthography — trivial assertions, sufficiently disproved by the 

 education which was then received at the school of Brienne, and the 

 trials to be undergone before entering the military school. But, if 

 he knew of our language all that a Frenchman brought up in a royal 

 college could not avoid knowing, I confess that his style was feeble 

 and colourless, if neither passion nor interest guided his pen. But 

 this impetuous mortal was so rarely tranquil in the course of his life 

 that is diction, written or spoken, was at once abrupt, veliement, 

 cutting, and gigantic. Led away by the force of his ideas, and un- 

 able to express them, more than once he violated the rules of syntax, 

 and created phraseology that belonged to himself alone. 



I sometimes ventured to reprehend such licences. He answered, 

 " Neither thinking nor acting as other men, experiencing thousands 

 of sensations more than they, I must of necessity construct my 

 phrases differently and seek for new expressions to render ideas 

 never before expressed. Our language in relation to my feelings 

 is in a state of beggary." 



The mood in which the young scholar left me was a sure guaran- 

 tee to me that his letter to his father would be imprinted with the 

 resentment he bore his family, which letter he gave to the porter 

 that afternoon Mith an injunction to put it instantly into the post. I 

 was young, and curious in the extreme to know all that concerned 

 my fellow-student. As Napoleon never wrote without making a 

 rough copy, I resolved to seek in his box for that of the letter he 

 had just despatched, to learn in what style he wrote to his family. 

 I found and copied it in short hand, and give it here as transcribed 

 from the original. It is different from one printed at Padua with 

 the same date and from the same original ; but the following 



M. M No. 4. Z 



