Italian, much less French, with accuracy; and his tutor at Paris not
inaptly described his boyish composition as resembling molten granite.
The same qualities of directness and impetuosity were also fatal to
his efforts at mastering the movements of the dance. In spite of
lessons at Paris and private lessons which he afterwards took at
Valence, he was never a dancer: his bent was obviously for the exact
sciences rather than the arts, for the geometrical rather than the
rhythmical: he thought, as he moved, in straight lines, never in
curves.

The death of his father during the year which the youth spent at Paris
sharpened his sense of responsibility towards his seven younger
brothers and sisters. His own poverty must have inspired him with
disgust at the luxury which he saw around him; but there are good
reasons for doubting the genuineness of the memorial which he is
alleged to have sent from Paris to the second master at Brienne on
this subject. The letters of the scholars at Paris were subject to
strict surveillance; and, if he had taken the trouble to draw up a
list of criticisms on his present training, most assuredly it would
have been destroyed. Undoubtedly, however, he would have sympathized
with the unknown critic in his complaint of the unsuitableness of
sumptuous meals to youths who were destined for the hardships of the
camp. At Brienne he had been dubbed "the Spartan," an instance of that
almost uncanny faculty of schoolboys to dash off in a nickname the
salient features of character. The phrase was correct, almost for
Napoleon's whole life. At any rate, the pomp of Paris served but to
root his youthful affections more tenaciously in the rocks of Corsica.

In September, 1785, that is, at the age of sixteen, Buonaparte was
nominated for a commission as junior lieutenant in La Fère regiment of