I wanted to purchase the manuscript, but Louis Bonaparte bought it.

I did not make a copy of the note which related to myself, because I should naturally have felt diffident in making any use of it.

It would, however, have served to show how time and circumstances frequently reversed the distinctions which arise at school or college.

Judging from the reports of the inspector of military schools, young Bonaparte was not, of all the pupils at Brienne in 1784, the one most calculated to excite prognostics of future greatness and glory.
The note to which I have just alluded, and which was written by M.de Kerralio, then inspector of the military schools, describes Bonaparte in the following terms: INSPECTION OF MILITARY SCHOOLS 1784.
REPORT MADE FOR HIS MAJESTY BY M.DE KERALIO.
M.de Buonaparte (Napoleon), born 15th August 1769, height 4 feet 10 inches 10 lines, is in the fourth class, has a good constitution, excellent health, character obedient, upright, grateful, conduct very regular; has been always distinguished by his application to mathematics.

He knows history and geography very passably.