At Paris the elevation of his character, his untiring devotion to study, his peculiar conversational energy, and the almost boundless information he had acquired, attracted much attention. His solitary and recluse habits, and his total want of sympathy with most of his fellow students in their idleness, and in their frivolous amusements, rendered him far from popular with the multitude. His great superiority was, however, universally recognized. He pressed on in his studies with as much vehemence as if he had been forewarned of the extraordinary career before him, and that but a few months were left in which to garner up those stores of knowledge with which he was to remodel the institutions of Europe, and almost change the face of the world. About this time he was at Marseilles on some day of public festivity. A large party of young gentlemen and ladies were amusing themselves with dancing. Napoleon was rallied upon his want of gallantry in declining to participate in the amusements of the evening. He replied, "It is not by playing and dancing that a _man_ is to be formed." Indeed he never, from childhood, took any pleasure in fashionable dissipation. He had not a very high opinion of men or women in general. He was perfectly willing to provide amusements which he thought adapted to the capacities of the masculine and feminine minions flitting about the court; but his own expanded mind was so engrossed with vast projects of utility and renown, that he found no moments to spare in cards and billiards, and he was at the furthest possible remove from what may be called a lady's man. On one occasion a mathematical problem of great difficulty having been proposed to the class, Napoleon, in order to solve it, secluded himself in his room for seventy-two hours; and he solved the problem. This extraordinary faculty of intense and continuous exertion both of mind and body, was his distinguishing characteristic through life. Napoleon did not blunder into renown. His triumphs were not casualties; his achievements were not accidents; his grand conceptions were not the brilliant flashes of unthinking and unpremeditated genius. Never did man prepare the way for greatness by more untiring devotion to the acquisition of all useful knowledge, and to the attainment of the highest possible degree of mental discipline. That he possessed native powers of mind, of extraordinary vigor it is true; but those powers were expanded and energized by Herculean study. His mighty genius impelled to the sacrifice of every indulgence, and to sleepless toil.