It is a picturesque old town, placed on a sloping hillside, that runs down to the Arroux River.

There is a cathedral in the town over nine hundred years old; and there, too, Napoleon found a college and a seminary, a museum and a library, with plenty of ruins, walls, and gateways, and such things, that told of its great age and old-time grandeur.
It was a fine place in which to go to school, and the Bonaparte boys must have found it quite a change from their Corsican home.

The bishop of Autun, who had charge of the cathedral and the schools, was the nephew of a friend of Charles Bonaparte, and he promised to look after the boys.
Napoleon did not stay long in the school at Autun.

His father went to Paris to enter upon his duties as delegate to the Assembly, intending, while there, to make arrangements for getting Napoleon into the military school at Brienne.
But there was much need of the preparatory work at Autun.

For you must know that, being a Corsican, Napoleon knew scarcely a word of French.
The Corsicans speak Italian, and this would never do for a French schoolboy.