Note Back to Main Text — Chapter IV

The climax of the miserable business was reached when to a taunt that his ancestry was nothing, "his father a wretched tipstaff," Napoleon replied by challenging his tormentor to fight a duel. For this offense he was put in confinement while the instigator went unpunished. It was by the intervention of Marbeuf that his young friend was at length released. Bruised and wounded in spirit, the boy would gladly have shaken the dust of Brienne from his feet, but necessity forbade. Either from some direct communication Napoleon had with his protector, or through a dramatic but unauthenticated letter purporting to have been written by him to his friends in Corsica and still in existence, Marbeuf learned that the chiefest cause of all the bitterness was the inequality between the pocket allowances of the young French nobles and that of the young Corsican. The kindly general displayed the liberality of a family friend, and gladly increased the boy's gratuity, administering at the same time a smart rebuke to him for his readiness to take offense. He is likewise thought to have introduced his young charge to Mme. Loménie de Brienne, whose mansion was near by.[3] This noble woman, it is asserted, became a second mother to the lonely child: though there were no vacations, yet long holidays were numerous and these were passed with her; her tenderness softened his rude nature, the more so as she knew the value of tips to a school-boy, and administered them liberally though judiciously.