That summer Napoleon passed his graduation examination with flying colors and graduated from the Officers' School as he had hoped. He was transferred to Raphael's corps and received the rank of second lieutenant of artillery. The day Napoleon left Paris, Joseph went to the stagecoach station to see him off. Napoleon was dressed in a new gray-blue uniform, with a sword at his belt, and looked extraordinarily spry and, if he hadn't been a little shorter, a little formidable.
"A bit of an officer." Joseph reached out and patted Napoleon on the shoulder, "Do well and become a general sooner rather than later."
"What's so great about being a general in France?" Napoleon butted in.
"Don't say things like that in front of the others." Joseph said, "Go to the army and do a good job, practice your real skills, and you'll be able to use them no matter what you do in the future."
After seeing Napoleon off and returning to the school, Joseph had just sat down at his desk and hadn't even had a chance to make himself a cup of coffee when he saw Will, the principal's secretary, walk in.
"Mr. Bonaparte, the principal wants to see you about something." Will said.
Joseph hurriedly stood up and followed Will towards the small two-story building that the principal had all to himself.
"Will, what does the principal want to see me about?" Joseph asked as he walked along the path by the flower beds toward the small building.
"It's also like there's some kind of engineering thing going on up there, I'm not really sure about the details, you'll find out when you meet the principal in a while." Will replied.
The two of them walked into Count Dupont's small building as they talked, a waiter wearing a wig pulled open the door for them, and took the hat handed over by Joseph in his hand, "Mr. Bonaparte, the Count is waiting for you in his office upstairs. Please follow me."
Joseph followed the maitre d', went up to the second floor, and entered Count Dupont's office. The maitre d' then retreated.
"Ah, Mr. Bonaparte, you are here." Count Dupont said.
"Headmaster, you are looking for me for something?" Joseph asked.
"Yes, some engineering matters. Well ... have you been to Calais, the one that specializes in lace?" Count Dupont asked suddenly.
"No." Joseph replied.
"Oh, among the cities of the provinces, Calais is not bad. A nice one to take one or more young lovers on vacation. But that's not why I mentioned Calais to you this time, it's because of a military assignment. Would you like to go?" Count Dupont smiled.
"I am willing to serve my country." Joseph hurriedly said, "I wonder what it is about?"
"It's nothing, the batteries in Calais Harbor are too old to be used. So there is a need for a new battery that will be used to defend the harbor. And this new battery needs a math consultant. This matter should have been arranged for Mr. Monge. But Monsieur Monge had other commitments, so he recommended you. Joseph - is it alright for me to call you that?"
"Of course it's fine." Joseph hurriedly said.
"Well, Joseph." Count Dupont said, "The school's salary is actually very limited, it's not enough to starve, but it's not easy to live well on it alone. And going on these kinds of missions is tiring, but the income is very good. A few times out on a mission like this, and you can save up a small fortune. Look at Monge, his salary is actually limited compared to yours, but by having more of these kinds of things, he earns at least six or seven times as much as you do."
Joseph knew that Monge had recommended this matter to him, certainly because he was too busy with his own affairs, but the intention of looking after himself was also obvious. Then he gratefully said, "Thank you, Headmaster."
"Thank me for what? You should rather thank Mr. Monge." Count Dupont laughed, "Of course, this person, Monge, is a bit curmudgeonly, if you want to send him a gift, he might even feel that you're insulting his character ... " Saying this, Count Dupont shook his head again, "If you want to thank him, you'd better is to send him a created article. Well, you're going to serve as a math advisor this time, and both I, and Monge, hope that you'll take this opportunity to advance further in your academics. Well, things over there aren't too urgent, but if you don't have anything else to do, organize the work at hand and report to Calais as soon as possible."
Knowing that this statement was basically the Chinese equivalent of serving tea to send off a guest, Joseph thanked Count Dupont once again and retreated. Now that the semester was about to end, he basically had nothing on his hands. So after a little bit of processing, three days later, he took the letter of introduction issued by Count Dupont, boarded a stagecoach, and traveled to Calais.
In later times, there was a Eurostar high speed train connecting Paris and Calais, and it didn't even take an hour to go to Calais from Paris. But in this era, there was no such good thing, and it took two whole days for Joseph to arrive in Calais near sunset.
Because the time was already very late, Joseph did not go directly to the naval camp in the harbor of Calais. At this time of the day, there would most likely be no one on the naval side to receive him. So he directly found a very common inn near the harbor and stayed there, and after fighting with bedbugs for a night, he left the inn at the first light of the next day and resolved not to live in this kind of cheap inn anymore.
Along the streets, which were paved with stones, Joseph walked in the direction of the harbor.
The harbor of Calais was divided into two parts; on one side was the noisy civilian dock, where a number of flute-type ships, as well as a few others, were docked along a couple of trestles. It was still very early in the morning, but some sailors could already be seen scrubbing the decks. On the other side, there was the French Navy's military dock. The scale of the military dock in Calais harbor was much smaller than the civilian dock, there was only one trestle bridge, and on the side of the trestle bridge, there was only a single deck frigate and a patrol boat with only two masts parked. The main force of the French Navy has always been in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, and the port of Calais is too close to the United Kingdom - standing high on the shore looking west, if the weather is good, you can even look directly across the Dover Harbor on both sides of the white cliffs stretching. Calais is only thirty kilometers away from the British port of Dover, and the French Navy probably felt that if they placed their main forces here, they were always worried that one day they would be blocked directly in the harbor by the British Navy. So they never set up their main force here. Perhaps based on the same consideration, the British also never deployed their main fleet in Dover.
Joseph then walked in the direction of the military dock. He walked up to the gate with the refused horses erected.
"Halt, military restricted area, no approach!" A red-nosed sentry shouted toward him, then walked toward Joseph with a flintlock rifle with a bayonet.
"I am Joseph Bonaparte, a math teacher at the Officers' School in Paris. I have been ordered to come and report to Commander Wilford." Joseph said as he pulled out his letter of introduction and handed it over.
That sentry handed over his gun to his left hand, took the letter of introduction with his right hand, scanned the cover, then looked up at Joseph again, and said, "Sir, please wait here for a little while."
With these words, he turned with the letter of introduction and walked inside the gate. After giving two instructions to another sentry, he took the letter and walked towards a small building over there.
Joseph then stood outside the gate and waited. After a while, he saw the sentry coming along with a captain.
That captain said to Joseph, "Mr. Bonaparte, I am Navy Captain Cisse. Commander Wilford is not in the harbor right now. Rather, he is in the fortress on the hill over there. I can send one of my men to escort you there."
"Then I'll trouble you." Joseph replied.
"Do you know how to ride a horse?" Captain Cisse asked again.
"A little." Joseph replied.
"That's good." Cisse said. He turned to the sentry again and said, "Pierre, go get us two horses."
The sentry promised and left, and Cisse then talked to Joseph.
"Is it surprising that there is such a young math teacher at the Officers' School in Paris these days?" Cisse said.
"Monsieur Monge was also young when he came into his own." Joseph replied.
"Ah yes, geniuses are like that." Cissé said, "Well, I see by your name that your ancestry is Italian?"
"I'm Corsican." Joseph replied, "Sort of half Italian."
"My grandfather's generation was still Italian. But my family has been in France for three generations. Well, I don't even speak Italian very well anymore." Cisse said, "I've heard that the Corsican dialect is very close to Italian?"
"Very close indeed, even in a sense the Corsican dialect should be counted more as a dialect of Italian ..."
As the two men were talking, Pierre, the sentry, had come with two horses.
They were two ordinary military horses; the navy only needed horses for commuting and pulling, not warhorses for charging into battle.
Cisse handed Joseph the reins of one of the mares, a gray and white flowered mare, and said, "Mr. Bonaparte, you follow me and I will slow down."
With a word of thanks, Joseph took the reins and rolled onto his horse. Cisse stood to the side, seemingly ready to help Joseph if necessary. When he saw Joseph dryly mount his horse, he nodded and also rolled over onto the other horse before urging his horse to go ahead.
The fortress wasn't really far from the military harbor; in fact, the fortress was right next to the harbor on top of a small plateau a few dozen meters high. The two men drove their horses to trot for just a few minutes before they approached the fortress.
After dismounting in front of the fort's rejected horses, Cisse said a few words to the sentry in front of the fort and handed over the two horses to that sentry before leading Joseph into the fort.
"The sentry recognized Cisse to be sure. But just because he recognized him, he let him bring another person into the fort without even asking, this discipline enforcement of the French Navy ... is no wonder that it will be hanged by the British fancy." Joseph couldn't help but think.
Cisse led Joseph along a stone path, around the frontal gun emplacements, then around a grove of maple trees, and a small, white, two-story building appeared in front of them.
"This is the fort's command post, Commander Wilford is here." Cisse said to Joseph. Then led Joseph over.