Napoleon dated his great confidence in himself from this drum.

This boy's heroic act was represented in stone on the front of the Pantheon of Paris.
Two days before the battle of Jena Napoleon said: "My lads, you must not fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy's ranks." Arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled and discouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies in mathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-book caught his attention and interested him.

He found it to be a short letter from D'Alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, and read: "Go on, sir, go on.

The difficulties you meet with will resolve themselves as you advance.

Proceed and light will dawn and shine with increasing clearness on your path." "That maxim," he said, "was my greatest master in mathematics." Overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, the captain of a French brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite of all the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, and alter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompanied by a horrible crash.