after Brienne, it is stated that "for the languages and belles-
lettres, he had no taste." Next to this, the literature of elegance
and refinement, the philosophy of the closet and drawing-room, with
which his contemporaries are imbued, glided over his intellect as over
a hard rock. None but mathematical truths and positive notions about
geography and history found their way into his mind and deeply
impressed it. Everything else, as with his predecessors of the
fifteenth century, comes to him through the original, direct action of
his faculties in contact with men and things, through his prompt and
sure tact, his indefatigable and minute attention, his indefinitely
repeated and rectified divinations during long hours of solitude and
silence. Practice, and not speculation, is the source of his
instruction, the same as with a mechanic brought up amongst machinery.

"There is nothing relating to warfare that I cannot make myself. If
nobody knows how to make gunpowder, I do. I can construct gun-
carriages. If cannon must be cast, I will see that it is done
properly. If tactical details must be taught, I will teach them."[54]

This is why he is competent right from the beginning, general in the
artillery, major-general, diplomatist, financier and administrator of
all kinds. Thanks to this fertile apprenticeship, beginning with the
Consulate, he shows officials and veteran ministers who send in their
reports to him what to do.

"I am a more experienced administrator than they,[55] when one has
been obliged to extract from his brains the ways and means with which
to feed, maintain, control, and move with the same spirit and will two
or three hundred thousand men, a long distance from their country, one
has soon discovered the secrets of administration."