The Archdeacon Lucian managed the family affairs economically; and it cost the young Napoleon great exertion to obtain a little additional money to meet his expenses. But he obtained it. The whole family felt the influence of the young man, and was subject to the sway of this born ruler. It is characteristic—since empire was his destiny—that he, the second-born, has not only the mastery of his younger brothers and sisters, but even of his elder brother, and that his interference has a decisive effect on their upbringing. It was soon quite well understood that the young Napoleon was to be obeyed. I find an authentic letter of Napoleon to his uncle Fesch, afterwards the Cardinal, dated from Brienne, the 15th July 1784. The boy of fifteen, in writing here as to the career on which his eldest brother Joseph ought to enter, speaks in the clearest and most sensible way of the circumstances necessary to be taken into account. The letter is sufficiently well worth reading—especially if we consider that the Joseph of whom so many doubts are therein expressed, afterwards became King of Spain. NAPOLEON TO HIS UNCLE FESCH. "MY DEAR UNCLE,—I write to inform you of the journey of my dear father over Brienne to Paris, where he has gone in order to take Marianne (afterwards Eliza of Tuscany) to St. Cyr, and to re-establish his health. He arrived here on the 21st with Lucian, and the two demoiselles whom you saw: he has left Lucian here. He is nine years old, and three feet, eleven inches, ten lines high: he is in the sixth in Latin, and will learn the various branches taught in this school; he shows much talent and willingness, and we may hope that something will come of him (_que ce sera un bon sujet_). [Lucian was the only one of the family who scorned a crown.] He is healthy, he is strong, lively, and thoughtless, and, in the meantime, his masters are content with him. He knows French very well, and has completely forgotten his Italian; but he will write to you along with this, and I shall say nothing to him, that you may see how matters stand with him. "I hope he will write to you oftener now, than he did when he was in Autun.... I am confident my brother Joseph has not written to you yet. How could you expect it? He sends my dear father, when he does write to him, at most two lines. He is, in truth, quite changed. He writes to me, however, frequently. He is in the rhetoric class; and he would do better if he were diligent, for the master told my dear father that there was no one in the college (at Autun) who showed more talent than he in physics, rhetoric, or philosophy, or who could make so good a translation. In regard to the profession he is to follow, you know he at first chose the clerical. He kept by this resolution up till the present hour, but he now wishes to serve the king. In this he is wrong, on several grounds.