at the left angle of the house on the third floor.  That was Napoleon’s chamber when he paid us a visit, and a neat little room it was.  My brother used to occupy the one next to it.  The two young men were nearly of the same age:  my brother perhaps had the advantage of a year or fifteen months.  My mother had recommended him to cultivate the friendship of young Bonaparte; but my brother complained how unpleasant it was to find only cold politeness where he expected affection.  This repulsiveness on the part of Napoleon was almost offensive, and must have been sensibly felt by my brother, who was not only remarkable for the mildness of his temper and the amenity and grace of his manner, but whose society was courted in the most distinguished circles of Paris on account of his accomplishments.  He perceived in Bonaparte a kind of acerbity and bitter irony, of which he long endeavoured to discover the cause.  ‘I believe,’ said Albert one day to my mother, ’that the poor young man feels keenly his dependent situation.’” (’Memoirs of the Duchesse d’Abrantes, vol. i. p. 18, edit. 1883).]—­

I accompanied him in a carriole as far as Nogent Sur Seine, whence the coach was to start.  We parted with regret, and we did not meet again till the year 1792.  During these eight years we maintained an active correspondence; but so little did I anticipate the high destiny which, after his elevation, it was affirmed the wonderful qualities of his 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.