“My young friend,” said M. de Permont, with a friendly smile, “I come to bring you the small sum which you need to enable you to take a part in the festivity.  Here it is; take it, I pray you.”

But Napoleon, with a vehement movement of the hand, waved back the offered money, a burning redness for a moment covered his face, then his cheeks assumed that yellowish whiteness which in the child had always indicated a violent emotion.

“No,” cried he, vehemently, “no, I have nothing to do with this meaningless festivity.  I thank you—­I receive no alms.”

M. de Permont gazed with emotions of sympathizing sorrow in the pale face of the poor young man for whom poverty was preparing so many griefs, and in the generosity of his heart he had recourse to a falsehood.

“This is no alms I offer you, Napoleon,” said he, gently, “but this money belongs to you, it comes from your father.  At his dying hour he confided to me a small sum of money, with the express charge to keep it for you and to give you a portion of it in pressing circumstances, when your personal honor required it.  I therefore bring you to-day the fourth part of this sum, and retain the rest for another pressing occasion.”

With a penetrating, searching look.  Napoleon gazed into the face of the speaker, and the slight motions of a sarcastic smile played for an instant around his thin, compressed lips.

“Well, then,” said he, after a pause, “since this money comes from my father, I can use it; but had you simply wished to lend it to me, I could not have received it.  My mother has already too much responsibility and care; I cannot increase them by an outlay, especially when such an outlay is imposed upon me by the sheer folly of my schoolmates.” [Footnote:  Napoleon’s words.—­See “Memoires de la Duchesse d’Abrantes,” vol. i., p. 81.]

He then took the offered sum for which, as he thought, he was indebted to no man, and hastened to pay his contribution to the festivity.  But, in respect to his principles, he took no part in the festivity, but declaimed all the louder, and in a more biting tone, against the criminal propensities for pleasure in the young men who, instead of turning their attention to their studies, lavished away their precious time in dissipation and frivolities.

These anxieties and humiliations of poverty Napoleon had doubly to endure, not only for himself, but also for his sister Marianne (who afterward called herself Elise).  She had been, as already said, at her father’s intercession and application, received in the royal educational institute of St. Cyr, and there enjoyed the solid and brilliant education of the pupils of the king.  But the spirit of luxury and the desire for pleasure had also penetrated into this institution, founded by the pious and high-minded Madame de Maintenon, and the young ladies of St. Cyr had among themselves picnics and festivals, as well as the young men of the military school.