'Hello.'

Napoleon's eyes snapped open and he sat up in a hurry, swinging his boots off the bed. Leaning against the doorway was a cadet in the uniform of the school. He was a little taller than Napoleon, and broader. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and as he felt himself being quickly assessed by the new arrival he laughed, revealing a good set of teeth.

'Don't worry, I haven't been sent to spy on you. And I don't bite.'

Napoleon blushed, and then, angry that he had been made to feel awkward, his expression instantly switched to a frown. The boy eased himself off the doorframe and stepped into the room, holding out his hand.

'Alexander Des Mazis, at your service.'

Napoleon looked at him warily, before he reached out and shook hands briefly. 'Napoleon Buona Parte.'

'An unusual name. And accent. Where are you from?'

'Corsica.'

'Ah… Corsica. I see.'

'What does that mean?'

The boy shrugged. 'Nothing.'

Des Mazis noted the suspicious expression in the other's face and continued, 'No, really. It's nothing. I've never met a Corsican before. That's all.'

'Well, don't worry. We don't bite. Unless we have to.'

Des Mazis laughed. 'Well said! Come on, Corsican, I'll show you round the school, if you like.'

Napoleon did not reply immediately, still unsure if he liked, let alone trusted, this boy. But what harm could come of it? Besides, it would be good to know his way round the buildings and grounds as soon as possible. He nodded. 'Thank you.'

The school turned out to be even more impressive than had been Napoleon's first impression on walking through the main gate. There was a fine chapel, a library with more books than he had ever seen before, stables, a riding school, parade ground and gardens for recreation. In addition to the fine accommodation the school had the best teachers, and a full complement of cooks, nurses, grooms and other servants. The food, Des Mazis told him, was as good as could be found in any school in France.

'They'll soon feed you up,' Des Mazis smiled. 'Put some meat on your bones.'

'I eat well enough already,' Napoleon replied stiffly. 'I'm here to learn to be a soldier, not a glutton.'

'Maybe. But you can mix ambition with pleasure, you know.'

Des Mazis clapped him on the shoulder and steered the new boy towards a group of students walking down the path towards them.

'Here, let me introduce you to some people.'

The only specifically military aspects of the curriculum provided by the school were fencing and fortifications. Riding, shooting and drilling were taught in the barracks of regiments based in and around Paris.As before, Napoleon's success was mixed. Despite his teachers' best efforts, they failed to eradicate his Corsican accent. After a very poor start at Latin and English, Napoleon was able to give up both subjects and take up more classes in maths and history, in which he impressed his teachers. However, the terrible quality of his handwriting was a source of despair for those who were called upon to mark his work.

Outside of classes Napoleon found that he continued to be the butt of practical jokes. Despite the captain-commandant's fine pieties about the school's ethos, Napoleon soon discovered that most of his fellow students treated him in a condescending, and sometimes contemptuous, manner.

Only Alexander Des Mazis considered himself a friend of Napoleon, and even then there were times when the thin-skinned Corsican blew up over a careless remark about his background, and there would be days of bitter sulking before he recovered from his outburst. On one such occasion the two boys were working in the library, searching for material on the siege of Malta. They had been told to prepare a detailed outline of the siege for presentation to the rest of the class. Alexander had been reading about the tough geography of the island and had been curious about how Malta compared to Corsica.

'I'm not sure that it does,' Napoleon replied. 'From what I've read about Malta, it's largely barren. My country is mountainous, and green. There's snow in the hills in winter and lush pastures in spring…' He gazed out of the window, into the crowded and filthy street below, where carts trundled past and many of the capital's poorest inhabitants wore tattered clothes, their grimy faces pinched with hunger. He felt homesick and, as often before, he had a sudden powerful yearning to go back. To go home and never return to France. He turned from the window and saw Alexander looking at him with an amused expression.

'What?'

'Nothing.'

'Then why are you looking at me like that?'

'It's just that you said "my country". I was under the impression that it was a part of France these days.'

'These days,' Napoleon nodded. 'But not for ever. One day we will be free again.'

'Oh! Come on, Napoleon!' Alexander nudged him.'You speak French, you're in a French school in the French capital.Ten years from now, you'll be a captain, or if you're really good, a major in the French Army, and you'll be bound by an oath of loyalty to the French King. How much more French can you get than that?'

Napoleon stared back at him for a moment, eyes wide and unblinking. Then he clenched his fist and struck his chest lightly. 'In here I am Corsican. I always will be.Anyway, I doubt if all your aristocratic friends will ever let me forget it.'

'My aristocratic friends?' Alexander smiled. 'I see. It's your country, because of my friends. Is that it? Listen, Napoleon, you can't do this to yourself.'

'Do what?'

'Cultivate this pig-headed pride in your origins. It's your way of getting back at those who torment you.When you see French aristocrats, you see privilege and riches. Being a Corsican is all you have so you've turned it into some kind of priceless virtue.'

'It is priceless, because it's my identity. Being Corsican is what makes me what I am.'

'Really? It seems to me that not being a French aristocrat is what makes you what you are.' Alexander paused to let his words sink in before he continued. 'The truth is, you can't bear it. You can't bear not having money or a title.'

'Rubbish!' Napoleon sat back in his chair and folded his arms.

'I wonder,' Alexander continued shrewdly. 'I wonder what will happen once you have some money behind you. Money, perhaps a title, and some land. Then you'll finally be as French as the rest of us.'

'No I won't. I am Corsican and that means far more to me than any fortune or title. It means I am better than these fops whose parents pay for them to come here. Corsica will be free again one day. Because of men like me. And what is more, we'll take freedom by ourselves, and have a free country with liberty for all men. It won't be like this,' he swept his arm round to dismiss the world outside, 'a tyranny propped up by parasitic aristocrats lording it over a nation of starving beggars…'

Alexander stared at him. 'My God, you really mean that. Well, as a representative of the parasitic class, I'd just like to know why you have taken advantage of our hospitality these last six years. If Corsica is so fine a country, then why are you here?' He smiled coolly. 'It appears that it takes a parasite to know a parasite.'

Napoleon was still for a moment, caught between the desire to vent his fury on Alexander, and the realisation that much of what he had said was the truth.And the knowledge of the truth was too painful to contemplate.Too painful to apologise for. He let out an explosive exhalation of breath and stormed from the room, down the corridor, out across the courtyard, past the guard on the main gate and into the street.

For some hours he stalked along wide thoroughfares and down small side streets, face fixed in an angry frown as thoughts raced through his mind in a jumble of arguments and justifications for the position he had taken against Alexander. But at every turn he came up against the simple fact that he was taking advantage of a system he claimed to despise. Despite his protestations of loyalty to Corsica, every day he trained at the Military School brought him one day closer to adopting the uniform of the nation that had seized control of Corsica by bayonet and bullet. He was a hypocrite at best, and at worst a traitor.That word stung him into a fresh bout of denial and anger as he turned a corner and blundered into a man pasting a sign to a grimy plaster wall. The small jar of paste spilled down Napoleon's front. The man took one glance at Napoleon's uniform and then he dropped his brush and turned to run away as fast as his legs could carry him.