boyhood plainly denoted, that I did not preserve one of the letters
he wrote to me at that period, but tore them up as soon as they were
answered.

--[I remember, however, that in a letter which I received from him
about a year after his arrival in Paris he urged me to keep my
promise of entering the army with him. Like him, I had passed
through the studies necessary for the artillery service; and in 1787
I went for three months to Metz, in order to unite practice with
theory. A strange Ordinance, which I believe was issued in 1778 by
M. de Segur, required that a man should possess four quarterings of
nobility before he could be qualified to serve his king and country
as a military officer. My mother went to Paris, taking with her the
letters patent of her husband, who died six weeks after my birth.
She proved that in the year 1640 Louis XIII. had, by letters
patent, restored the titles of one Fauvelet de Villemont, who in
1586 had kept several provinces of Burgundy subject to the king's
authority at the peril of his life and the loss of his property; and
that his family had occupied the first places in the magistracy
since the fourteenth century. All was correct, but it was observed
that the letters of nobility had not been registered by the
Parliament, and to repair this little omission, the sum of twelve
thousand francs was demanded. This my mother refused to pay, and
there the matter rested.]--

On his arrival at the Military School of Paris, Bonaparte found the
establishment on so brilliant and expensive a footing that he immediately
addressed a memorial on the subject to the Vice-Principal Berton of
Brienne.