Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica

Napoleon's father, Charles Bonaparte, was the honored progenitor of thirteen children, of whom the man who subsequently became the Emperor of the French, by some curious provision of fate, was the second.

That the infant Napoleon should have followed rather than led the procession is so foreign to the nature of the man that many worthy persons unfamiliar with the true facts of history have believed that Joseph was a purely apocryphal infant, or, as some have suggested, merely an adopted child; but that Napoleon did upon this occasion content himself with second place is an incontrovertible fact. Nor is it entirely unaccountable. It is hardly to be supposed that a true military genius, such as Napoleon is universally conceded to have been, would plunge into the midst of a great battle without first having acquainted himself with the possibilities of the future. A reconnoitre of the field of action is the first duty of a successful commander; and hence it was that Napoleon, not wishing to rush wholly unprepared into the battle of life, assigned to his brother Joseph the arduous task of first entering into the world to see how the land lay. Joseph having found everything to his satisfaction, Napoleon made his appearance in the little island of Corsica, recently come under French domination the 15th day August, 1769. Had he been born two months earlier, we are told, he would have been an Italian. Had he been born a hundred years later, it is difficult to say what he would have been. As it was, he was born a Frenchman. It is not pleasant to contemplate what the man's future would have been had he been born an Italian, nor is it easy to picture that future with any confidence born of certainty. Since the days of Caesar, Italy had not produced any great military commander, and it is not likely that the powers would have changed their scheme, confirmed by sixteen centuries of observance, in Napoleon's behalf-a fact which Napoleon himself realized, for he often said in his latter days, with a shudder: "I hate to think how inglorious I should have become had I been born two months earlier and entered the world as an Italian. I should have been another Joseph-not that Joseph is not a good man, but he is not a great man. Ah! Bourrienne, we cannot be too careful in the selection of our birthdays."

It is the testimony of all who knew him in his infancy that Napoleon was a good child. He was obedient and respectful to his mother, and sometimes at night when, on account of some indigestible quality of his food or other cause, it was necessary for his father to make a series of forced marches up and down the spacious nursery in the beautiful home at Ajaccio, holding the infant warrior in his arms, certain premonitions of his son's future career dawned upon the parent. His anguish was voiced in commanding tones; his wails, like his subsequent addresses to his soldiers, were short, sharp, clear, and decisive, nor would he brook the slightest halt in these midnight marches until the difficulties which stood in his path had been overcome. His confidence in himself at this early period was remarkable. Quick to make up his mind, he was tenacious of his purpose to the very end.

It is related that when barely seven months old, while sitting in his nurse's lap, by means of signs which she could not fail to comprehend, he expressed the desire, which, indeed, is characteristic of most healthy Children of that age, to possess the whole of the outside world, not to mention the moon and other celestial bodies. Reaching his little hands out in the direction of the Continent, lying not far distant over the waters of the Mediterranean, he made this demand; and while, of course, his desire was not granted upon the instant, it is the testimony of history that he never lost sight of that cherished object.

After providing Napoleon with eleven other brothers and sisters, Charles Bonaparte died, and left his good and faithful wife Letitia to care for the future greatness of his family, a task rendered somewhat the more arduous than it might otherwise have been by the lack of income; but the good woman, who had much of Napoleon's nature in her make-up, was equal to the occasion. She had her sons to help her, and was constantly buoyed up by the expressed determination of her second child to place her beyond the reach of want in that future day when the whole world lay grovelling at his feet.

"Do not worry, mother," Napoleon said. "Let Joseph and Lucien and Louis and Jerome and the girls be educated; as for me, I can take care of myself. I, who at the age of three have mastered the Italian language, have a future before me. I will go to France, and then-"

"Well! what then?" his mother asked.

"Nous verrons!" Napoleon replied, turning on his heel and walking out of the house whistling a military march.

From this it will be seen that even in his in fancy Napoleon had his ideas as to his future course. Another anecdote, which is taken from the unpublished memoirs of the grandson of one of his Corsican nurses, illustrates in an equally vivid manner how, while a mere infant in arms, he had a passion for and a knowledge of military terms. Early one morning the silence was broken by the incipient Emperor calling loudly for assistance. His nurse, rushing to him, discovered that the point of a pin was sticking into his back. Hastily removing the cause of the disturbance, she endeavored to comfort him:

"Never mind, sweetheart," she said, "it's only a nasty pin."

"Nasty pin!" roared Napoleon. "By the revered name of Paoli, I swear

I thought it was a bayonet!"

It was, no doubt, this early realization of the conspicuous part he was to play in the history of his time that made the youthful Bonaparte reserved of manner, gloomy, and taciturn, and prone to irritability. He felt within him the germ of future greatness, and so became impatient of restraint. He completely dominated the household. Joseph, his elder brother, became entirely subject to the imperious will of the future Emperor; and when in fancy Napoleon dreamed of those battles to come, Joseph was always summoned to take an active part in the imaginary fight. Now he was the bridge of Lodi, and, lying flat on his back, was forced to permit his bloodthirsty brother to gallop across him, shouting words of inspiration to a band of imaginary followers; again he was forced to pose as a snow-clad Alp for Napoleon to climb, followed laboriously by Lucien and Jerome and the other children. It cannot be supposed that this was always pleasing to Joseph, but he never faltered when the demand was made that he should act, because he did not dare.

"You bring up the girls, mother," Napoleon had said. "Leave the boys to me and I'll make kings of them all, if I have to send them over to the United States, where all men will soon be potentates, and their rulers merely servants-chosen to do their bidding."

Once, Joseph venturing to assert himself as the eldest son, Napoleon smiled grimly.

"And what, pray, does that mean?" he asked, scornfully.

"That I and not you am the head of the family," replied Joseph.

"Very well," said Napoleon, rushing behind him, and, by a rapidly conceived flank movement, giving Joseph a good sound kick. "How does the head of the family like the foot of the family? Don't ever prate of accidents of birth to me."

From that time on Joseph never murmured again, but obeyed blindly his brother's slightest behest. He would have permitted Napoleon to mow him down with grape-shot without complaint rather than rebel and incur the wrath which he knew would then fall upon his head.

At school the same defiance of restraint and contempt for superior strength characterized Napoleon. Here, too, his taciturn nature helped him much. If he were asked a question which he could not answer, he would decline to speak, so that his instructors were unable to state whether or not he was in ignorance as to the point under discussion, and could mark him down conscientiously as contumelious only. Hence it was that he stood well in his studies, but was never remarkable for deportment. His favorite plaything, barring his brother Joseph, was a small brass cannon that weighed some thirty odd pounds, and which is still to be seen on the island of Corsica. Of this he once said: "I'd rather hear its report than listen to a German band; though if I could get them both playing at the same time there'd be one German band less in the world."

This remark found its parallel later on when, placed by Barras in command of the defenders of the Convention against the attacks of the Sectionists, Napoleon was asked the chairman of the Assembly to send them occasional reports as to how matters progressed. His reply was terse.

"Legislators," he said, "you ask me for an occasional report. If you listen you will hear the report of my cannon. That is all you'll get, and it will be all you need. I am here. I will save you."

"It is a poor time for jokes," said a representative.

"It is a worse time for paper reports," retorted Napoleon. "It would take me longer to write out a legislative report than it will to clean out the mob. Besides, I want it understood at this end of my career that autograph-hunters are going to get left."

As he turned, Barras asked him as to his intentions.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To make a noise in the world," cried Napoleon; "au revoir."

That he had implanted in him the essential elements of a great fighter his school-companions were not long in finding out.

When not more than five years of age he fell in love with a little schoolmate, and, being jeered at for his openly avowed sentiments, he threatened to thrash the whole school, adding to the little maiden that he would thrash her as well unless she returned his love, a line of argument which completely won her heart, particularly in view of the fact that he proved his sincerity by fulfilling that part of his assumed obligations which referred to the subjugation of the rest of the school. It was upon this occasion that in reference to his carelessness of dress, his schoolmates composed the rhyme,

"Napoleon di mezza calzetta

Fa l'amore a Giacominetta."

which, liberally translated, means,

"Hi! Look at Nap! His socks down of his shin,

Is making love to little Giacomin."

To this Napoleon, on the authority of the Memoirs of his Father's

Hired Man, retorted:

"I would advise you, be not indiscreet,

Or I will yank YOUR socks right of your feet."

All of which goes to show that at no time in his youth was he to be trifled with. In poetry or a pitched battle he was quite equal to any emergency, and his companions were not long in finding it out.

So passed the infancy of Mr. Bonaparte, of Corsica. It was, after all, much like the extreme youth of most other children. In everything he undertook he was facile princeps, and in nothing that he said or did is there evidence that he failed to appreciate what lay before him. A visitor to the family once ventured the remark, "I am sorry, Napoleon, for you little Corsicans. You have no Fourth of July or Guy Fawkes Day to celebrate."

"Oh, as for that," said Napoleon, "I for one do not mind. I will make national holidays when I get to be a man, and at present I can get along without them. What's the use of Fourth of July when you can shoot off fireworks everyday?"

It was a pertinent question, the visitor departed much impressed with the boy's precocity, which was rendered doubly memorable by Napoleon's humor in discharging fifteen pounds of wadding from his cannon into the visitor's back as he went out of the front gate.

At the age of six Napoleon put aside all infantile pleasures, and at eight assumed all the dignity of that age. He announced his intention to cease playing war with his brother Joseph.

"I am no longer a child, Joseph," he said; "I shall no longer thrash you in play. Here-after I shall do it in sober earnest."

Which no doubt is why, in 1779, Napoleon having stuck faithfully to his promise, Joseph heartily seconded his younger brother's demand that he should leave Corsica and take a course of military instruction at Brienne.

"I shall no doubt miss my dear brother Napoleon," Joseph said to his mother; "but I would not stand in the way of his advancement. Let him go, even though by his departure I am deprived of all opportunity to assist him in his pleasing games of war."

As we have seen, the young Corsican was only ten years of age when, through the influence of Count Marboeuf, an old friend of the Bonaparte family, he was admitted to the military school at Brienne. Those who were present at the hour of his departure from home say that Napoleon would have wept like any other child had he yielded to the impulses of his heart, and had be not detected a smile of satisfaction upon the lips of his brother Joseph. It was this smile that drove all tender emotions from his breast. Taking Joseph to one side, he requested to know the cause of his mirth.

"I was thinking of something funny," said Joseph, paling slightly as he observed the stern expression of Napoleon's face.

"Oh, indeed," said Napoleon; "and what was that something? I'd like to smile myself."

"H'm!-ah-why," faltered Joseph, "it may not strike you as funny, you know. What is a joke for one man is apt to be a serious matter for another, particularly when that other is of a taciturn and irritable disposition."

"Very likely," said Napoleon, dryly; "and sometimes what is a joke for the man of mirth is likewise in the end a serious matter for that same humorous person. This may turn out to be the case in the present emergency. What was the joke? If I do not find it a humorous joke, I'll give you a parting caress which you won't forget in a hurry."

"I was only thinking," said Joseph, uneasily, "that it is a very good thing for that little ferry-boat you are going away on that you are going on it."

Here Joseph smiled weakly, but Napoleon was grim as ever.

"Well," he said, impatiently, "what of that?"

"Why," returned Joseph, "it seemed to me that such a tireless little worker as the boat is would find it very restful to take a Nap."

For an instant Napoleon was silent.

"Joseph," said he, as he gazed solemnly out of the window, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this. I had had regrets at leaving home. A moment ago I was ready to break down for the sorrow of parting from my favorite Alp, from my home, from my mother, and my little brass cannon; but now-now I can go with a heart steeled against emotion. If you are going in for humor of that kind, I'm glad I'm going away. Farewell."

With this, picking Joseph up in his arms and concealing him beneath the sofa cushions, Napoleon imprinted a kiss upon his mother's cheek, rushed aboard the craft that was to bear him to fame, and was soon but a memory in the little house at Ajaccio. "Parting is such sweet sorrow," murmured Joseph, as he watched the little vessel bounding over the turquoise waters of the imprisoned sea. "I shall miss him; but there are those who wax fat on grief, and, if I know myself, I am of that brand."

Arrived at Paris, Napoleon was naturally awe-stricken by the splendors of that wonderful city.

"I shall never forget the first sight I had of Paris," he said, years later, when speaking of his boyhood to Madame Junot, with whom he was enjoying a tete-a-tete in the palace at Versailles. "I wondered if I hadn't died of sea-sickness on the way over, as I had several times wished I might, and got to heaven. I didn't know how like the other place it was at that time, you see. It was like an enchanted land, a World's Fair forever, and the prices I had to pay for things quite carried out the World's Fair idea. They were enormous. Weary with walking, for instance, I hired a fiacre and drove about the city for an hour, and it cost me fifty francs; but I fell in with pleasant enough people, one of whom gave me a ten-franc ticket entitling me to a seat on a park bench-for five francs."

Madame Junot laughed.

"And yet they claim that bunco is a purely American institution," she said.

"Dame!" cried Napoleon, rising from the throne, and walking excitedly up and down the palace floor, "I never realized until this moment that I had been swindled! Bourrienne, send Fouche to me. I remember the man distinctly, and if he lives he has yet to die."

Calming down, he walked to Madame Junot's side, and, taking her by the hand, continued:

"And then the theatres! What revelations of delight they were! I used to go to the Theatre Francais whenever I could sneak away and had the money to seat me with the gods in the galleries. Bernhardt was then playing juvenile parts, and Coquelin had not been heard of. Ah! my dear Madame Junot," he added, giving her ear a delicate pinch, "those were the days when life seemed worth the living-when one of a taciturn nature and prone to irritability could find real pleasure in existence. Oh to be unknown again!"

And then, Madame Junot's husband having entered the room, the Emperor once more relapsed into a moody silence.

But to return to Brienne. Napoleon soon found that there is a gulf measurable by no calculable distance between existence as the dominating force of a family and life as a new boy at a boarding- school. He found his position reversed, and he began for the first time in his life to appreciate the virtues of his brother Joseph. He who had been the victorious general crossing the Alps now found himself the Alp, with a dozen victorious generals crossing him; he who had been the gunner was now the target, and his present inability to express his feelings in language which his tormentors could understand, for he had not yet mastered the French tongue, kept him in a state of being which may well be termed volcanic.

"I simply raged within in those days," Napoleon once said to Las Casas. "I could have swallowed my food raw and it would have been cooked on its way down, I boiled so. They took me for a snow-clad Alp, when, as a matter of fact, I was a small Vesuvius, with a temperature that would have made Tabasco sauce seem like iced water by contrast."

His treatment at the hands of his fellow-students did much to increase his irritability, but he kept himself well in hand, biding the time when he could repay their insults with interest. They jeered him because he was short-short of stature and short of funds; they twitted him on being an alien, calling him an Italian, and asking him why he did not seek out a position in the street-cleaning bureau instead of endeavoring to associate with gentlemen. To this the boy made a spirited reply.

"I am fitting myself for that," he said. "I'll sweep your Parisian streets some day, and some of you particles will go with the rest of the dust before my broom."

He little guessed how prophetic were these words.

Again, they tormented Napoleon on being the son of a lawyer, and asked him who his tailor was, and whether or not his garments were the lost suits of his father's clients, the result of which was that, though born of an aristocratic family, the boy became a pronounced Republican, and swore eternal enmity to the high-born. Another result of this attitude towards him was that he retired from the companionship of all save his books, and he became intimate with Homer and Ossian and Plutarch-familiar with the rise and fall of emperors and empires. Challenged to fight a duel with one of his classmates for a supposititious insult, he accepted, and, having the choice in weapons, chose an examination in mathematics, the one first failing in a demonstration to blow his brains out. "That is the safer for you," he said to his adversary. "You are sure to lose; but the after-effects will not be fatal, because you have no brains to blow out, so you can blow out a candle instead."

Whatever came of the duel we are not informed; but it is to be presumed that it did not result fatally for young Bonaparte, for he lived many years after the incident, as most of our readers are probably aware. Had he not done so, this biography would have had to stop here, and countless readers of our own day would have been deprived of much entertaining fiction that is even now being scattered broadcast over the world with Napoleon as its hero. His love of books combined with his fondness for military life was never more beautifully expressed than when he wrote to his mother: "With my sword at my side and my Homer in my pocket, I hope to carve my way through the world."

The beauty and simplicity of this statement is not at all affected by Joseph's flippant suggestion that by this Napoleon probably meant that he would read his enemies to sleep with his Homer, and then use his sword to cut their heads off. Joseph, as we have already seen, had been completely subjugated by his younger brother, and it is not to be wondered at, perhaps, that, with his younger brother at a safe distance, he should manifest some jealousy, and affect to treat his sentiments with an unwarranted levity.

For Napoleon's self-imposed solitude everything at Brienne arranged itself propitiously. Each of the students was provided with a small patch of ground which he could do with as he pleased, and Napoleon's use of his allotted share was characteristic. He converted it into a fortified garden, surrounded by trees and palisades.

"Now I can mope in peace," he said-and he did.

It has been supposed by historians that it was here that Napoleon did all of his thinking, mapping out his future career, and some of them have told us what he thought. He dreamed of future glory always, one of them states; but whether upon the authority of a palisade or a tiger-lily is not mentioned. Others have given us his soliloquies as he passed to and fro in this little retreat alone, and heard only by the stars at night; but for ourselves, we must be accurate, and it is due to the reader at this point that we should confess-having no stars in our confidence-our entire ignorance as to what Napoleon Bonaparte said, did, or thought when sitting in solitude in his fortified bower; though if our candid impression is desired we have no hesitation in saying that we believe him to have been in Paris enjoying the sights of the great city during those periods of solitude. Boys are boys in all lands, and a knowledge of that peculiar species of human beings, the boarding-school boy, is convincing that, given a prospect of five or six hours of uninterrupted solitude, no youth of proper spirit would fail to avail himself of the opportunities thus offered to see life, particularly with a city like Paris within easy "hooky" distance.

It must also be remembered that the French had at this time abolished the hereafter, along with the idea of a Deity and all pertaining thereto, so that there was nothing beyond a purely temporal discipline and lack of funds to interfere with Bonaparte's enjoyment of all the pleasures which Paris could give. Of temporal discipline he need have had no fear, since, it was perforce relaxed while he was master of his solitude; as for the lack of funds, history has shown that this never interfered with the fulfilment of Napoleon's hopes, and hence the belief that the beautiful pictures, drawn by historians and painted by masters of the brush, of Napoleon in solitude should be revised to include a few accessories, drawn from such portions of Parisian life as will readily suggest themselves.

In his studies, however, Napoleon ranked high. His mathematical abilities were so marked that it was stated that he could square the circle with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back.

"The only circle I could not square at that time," said he, "was the family circle, being insufficiently provided with income to do so. I might have succeeded better had not Joseph's appetite grown too fast for the strength of my pocket; that was the only respect, however, in which I ever had any difficulty in keeping up with my dear elder brother." It was here, too, that he learned the inestimably important military fact that the shortest distance between two points is in a straight line; and that he had fully mastered that fact was often painfully evident to such of his schoolmates as seemed to force him to measure with his right arm the distance between his shoulder and the ends of their noses. Nor was he utterly without wit. Asked by a cribbing comrade in examination what a corollary was, Napoleon scornfully whispered back:

"A mathematical camel with two humps."

In German only was he deficient, much to the irritation of his instructor.

"Will you ever learn anything?" asked M. Bouer, the German teacher.

"Certainly," said Napoleon; "but no more German. I know the only word I need in that language."

"And what, pray, is that?"

"Surrender; that's all I'll ever wish to say to the Germans. But lest I get it wrong, pray tell me the imperative form of surrender in your native tongue."

M. Bouer's reply is not known to history, but it was probably not one which the Master of Etiquette at Brienne could have entirely commended.

So he lived at Brienne, thoroughly mastering the science of war; acquiring a military spirit; making no friends, but commanding ultimately the fearsome respect of his school-mates. One or two private interviews with little aristocrats who jeered at him for his ancestry convinced them that while he might not have had illustrious ancestors, it was not unlikely that he would in time develop illustrious descendants, and the jeerings and sneerings soon ceased. The climax of Bonaparte's career at Brienne was in 1784, when he directed a snowball fight between two evenly divided branches of the school with such effect that one boy had his skull cracked and the rest were laid up for weeks from their wounds.

"It was a wonderful fight," remarked Napoleon, during his campaign in Egypt. "I took good care that an occasional missent ball should bowl off the hat of M. Bouer, and whenever any particularly aristocratic aristocrat's head showed itself above the ramparts, an avalanche fell upon his facade with a dull, sickening thud. I have never seen an American college football game, but from all I can learn from accounts in the Paris editions of the American newspapers the effects physical in our fight and that game are about the same."

In 1784, shortly after this episode, Napoleon left Brienne, having learned all that those in authority there could teach him, and in 1785 he applied for and received admission to the regular army, much to the relief of Joseph.

"If he had flunked and come back to Corsica to live," said Joseph, "I think I should have emigrated. I love him dearly, but I'm fonder of myself, and Corsica, large as it is, is too small to contain Napoleon Bonaparte and his brother Joseph simultaneously, particularly as Joseph is distinctly weary of being used as an understudy for a gory battle-field."

The feeling among the larger boys at Brienne at Napoleon's departure was much the same as that experienced by Joseph when his soon to-be- famous brother departed from Corsica. The smaller boys regretted his departure, since it had been one of their greatest pleasures to watch Napoleon disciplining the upper classmen, but Bonaparte was as glad to go as the elders were to have him.

"Brienne is good enough in its way," said he; "but what's the use of fighting children? It's merely a waste of time cracking a youngster's skull with a snowball when you can go out into the real world and let daylight into a man's whole system with a few ounces of grape-shot."

He had watched developments at Paris, too, with the keenest interest, and was sufficiently far-seeing to know that the troubles of the King and Queen and their aristocratic friends boded well for a man fond of a military life who had sense enough to be on the right side. That it took an abnormal degree of intelligence to know which was the right side in those troublous days he also realized, and hence he cultivated that taciturnity and proneness to irritability which we have already mentioned.

"If it had not been for my taciturnity, Talleyrand," he observed, when in the height of his power, "I should have got it in the neck."

"Got what in the neck?" asked Talleyrand.

"The guillotine," rejoined the Emperor. "It was the freedom of speech which people of those sanguinary days allowed themselves that landed many a fine head in the basket. As for me, I simply held my tongue with both hands, and when I wearied of that I called some one in to hold it for me. If I had filled the newspapers with 'Interviews with Napoleon Bonaparte,' and articles on 'Where is France at?' with monographs in the leading reviews every month on 'Why I am what I am,' and all such stuff as that, I'd have condensed my career into one or two years, and ended by having my head divorced from my shoulders in a most commonplace fashion. Taciturnity is a big thing when you know how to work it, and so is proneness to irritability. The latter keeps you from making friends, and I didn't want any friends just then. They were luxuries which I couldn't afford. You have to lend money to friends; you have to give them dinners and cigars, and send bonbons to their sisters. A friend in those days would have meant bankruptcy of the worst sort. Furthermore, friends embarrass you when you get into public office, and try to make you conspicuous when you'd infinitely prefer to saw wood and say nothing. I took my loneliness straight, and that is one of the reasons why I am now the Emperor of France, and your master."

Before entering the army a year at a Parisian military school kept Bonaparte busy. There, as at Brienne, he made his influence felt. He found his fellow-pupils at Paris living in a state of luxury that was not in accord with his ideas as to what a soldier should have. Whether or not his new school-mates, after the time-honored custom, tossed him in a blanket on the first night of his arrival, history does not say, but Bonaparte had hardly been at the school a week when he complained to the authorities that there was too much luxury in their system for him.

"Cadets do not need feather-beds and eider-down quilts," he said; "and as for the sumptuous viands we have served at mealtime, they are utterly inappropriate. I'd rather have a plate of Boston baked beans or steaming buckwheat cakes to put my mind into that state which should characterize the thinking apparatus of a soldier than a dozen of the bouchees financieres and lobster Newburgs and other made- dishes which you have on your menu. Made-dishes and delicate beverages make one mellow and genial of disposition. What we need is the kind of food that will destroy our amiability and put us in a frame of mind calculated to make willing to kill our best friends- nay, our own brothers and sisters-if occasion arises, with a smiling face. Look at me. I could kill my brother Joseph, dear as he is to me, and never shed a tear, and it's buckwheat-cakes and waffles that have done it!"

Likewise he abhorred dancing.

"Away with dancing men!" he cried, impatiently, at one time when in the height of his power, to his Minister of War. "Suppose when I was crossing the Alps my soldiers had been of your dancing sort. How far would I have got if every time the band played a two-step my grenadiers had dropped their guns to pirouette over those snow-white wastes? Let the diplomats do the dancing. For soldiers give me men to whom the polka is a closed book and the waltz an abomination."

Holding these views, he naturally failed to win the sympathy of his fellows at the Paris school who, young nobles for the most part, could not understand his point of view. So, having nothing else to do, he applied himself solely to his studies and to reflection, and it was the happiest moment of his life up to that time when, having passed his examinations for entrance to the regular army, he received his commission as a second lieutenant.

"Now we're off!" he said to himself, as he surveyed himself in the mirror, after donning his uniform.

"It does not set very well in the back," remarked one of the maids of the pension in which he lived, glancing in at the door.

"It does not matter," returned Bonaparte, loftily. "As long as it sets well in front I'm satisfied; for you should know, madame, that a true soldier never shows his back, and that is the kind of a military person I am. A false front would do for me. I am no tin soldier, which in after-years it will interest you to remember. When you are writing your memoirs this will make an interesting anecdote."

From this it is to be inferred that at this time he had no thought of Moscow. Immediately after his appointment Bonaparte repaired to Valence, where his regiment was stationed and where he formed a strong attachment for the young daughter of Madame du Colombier, with whom, history records, he ate cherries before breakfast. This was his sole dissipation at that time, but his felicity was soon to be interrupted. His regiment was ordered to Lyons, and Bonaparte and his love were parted.

"Duty calls me, my dear," he said, on leaving her. "I would stay if I could, but I can't, and, on the whole, it is just as well. If I stayed I should marry you, and that would never do. You cannot support me, nor I you. We cannot live on cherries, and as yet my allowance is an ingrowing one-which is to say that it goes from me to my parent, and not from my parent to me. Therefore, my only love, farewell. Marry some one else. There are plenty of men who are fond of cherries before breakfast, and there is no reason why one so attractive as you should not find a lover."

The unhappy girl was silent for a moment. Then, with an ill- suppressed sob, she bade him go.

"You are right, Napoleon," she said. "Go. Go where duty calls you, and if you get tired of Lyons-"

"Yes?" he interrupted, eagerly.

"Try leopards!" she cried, rushing from his embrace into the house.

Bonaparte never forgave this exhibition of flippancy, though many years after, when he learned that his former love, who had married, as he had bade her do, and suffered, was face to face with starvation, it is said, on the authority of one of his ex-valet's memoirs, that he sent her a box of candied cherries from one of the most expensive confectionery-shops of Paris.

After a brief sojourn at Lyons, Napoleon was summoned with his regiment to quell certain popular tumults at Auxonne. There he distinguished himself as a handler of mobs, and learned a few things that were of inestimable advantage to him later. Speaking of it in after-years, he observed: "It is my opinion, my dear Emperor Joseph, that grape-shot is the only proper medicine for a mob. Some people prefer to turn the hose on them, but none of that for me. They fear water as they do death, but they get over water. Death is more permanent. I've seen many a rioter, made respectable by a good soaking, return to the fray after he had dried out, but in all my experience I have never known a man who was once punctured by a discharge of grape-shot who took any further interest in rioting."

About this time he began to regulate his taciturnity. On occasions he had opinions which he expressed most forcibly. In 1790, having gone to an evening reception at Madame Neckar's, he electrified his hostess and her guests by making a speech of some five hundred words in length, too long to be quoted here in full, but so full of import and delivered with such an air of authority that La Fayette, who was present, paled visibly, and Mirabeau, drawing Madame de Stael to one side, whispered, trembling with emotion, "Who is that young person?"

Whether this newly acquired tendency to break in upon the reserve which had hitherto been the salient feature of his speech had anything to do with it or not we are not aware, but shortly afterwards Napoleon deemed it wise to leave his regiment for a while, and to return to his Corsican home on furlough. Of course an affecting scene was enacted by himself and his family when they were at last reunited. Letitia, his fond mother, wept tears of joy, and Joseph, shaking him by the hand, rushed, overcome with emotion, from the house. Napoleon shortly after found him weeping in the garden.

"Why so sad, Joseph?" he inquired. "Are you sorry I have returned?"

"No, dear Napoleon," said Joseph, turning away his head to hide his tears, "it is not that. I was only weeping because-because, in the nature of things, you will have to go away again, and-the-the idea of parting from you has for the moment upset my equilibrium."

"Then we must proceed to restore it," said Napoleon, and, taking Joseph by the right arm, he twisted it until Joseph said that he felt quite recovered.

Napoleon's stay at Corsica was quite uneventful. Fearing lest by giving way to love of family, and sitting and talking with them in the luxuriously appointed parlor below-stairs, he should imbibe too strong a love for comfort and ease, and thus weaken his soldierly instincts, as well as break in upon that taciturnity which, as we have seen, was the keynote of his character, he had set apart for himself a small room on the attic floor, where he spent most of his time undisturbed, and at the same time made Joseph somewhat easier in his mind.

"When he's up-stairs I am comparatively safe," said Joseph. "If he stayed below with us I fear I should have a return of my nervous prostration."

Meantime, Napoleon was promoted to a first lieutenancy, and shortly after, during the Reign of Terror in Paris, having once more for the moment yielded to an impulse to speak out in meeting, he denounced anarchy in unmeasured terms, and was arrested and taken to Paris.

"It was a fortunate arrest for me," he said. "There I was in Corsica with barely enough money to pay my way back to the capital. Arrested, the State had to pay my fare, and I got back to active political scenes on a free pass. As for the trial, it was a farce, and I was triumphantly acquitted. The jury was out only fifteen minutes. I had so little to say for myself that the judges began to doubt if I had any ideas on any subject-or, as one of them said, having no head to mention, it would be useless to try and cut it off. Hence my acquittal and my feeling that taciturnity is the mother of safety."

Then came the terrible attack of the mob upon the Tuileries on the 20th of June, 1792. Napoleon was walking in the street with Bourrienne when the attack began.

"There's nothing like a lamp-post for an occasion like this, it broadens one's views so," he said, rapidly climbing up a convenient post, from which he could see all that went on. "I didn't know that this was the royal family's reception-day. Do you want to know what I think?"

"Mumm is the word," whispered Bourrienne. "This is no time to have opinions."

"Mumm may be the word, but water is the beverage. Mumm is too dry. What this crowd needs is a good wetting down," retorted Bonaparte. "If I were Louis XVI. I'd turn the hose on these tramps, and keep them at bay until I could get my little brass cannon loaded. When I had that loaded, I'd let them have a few balls hot from the bat. This is what comes of being a born king. Louis doesn't know how to talk to the people. He's all right for a state-dinner, but when it comes to a mass-meeting he is not in it."

And then as the King, to gratify the mob, put the red cap of Jacobinism upon his head, the man who was destined before many years to occupy the throne of France let fall an ejaculation of wrath.

"The wretches!" he cried. "How little they know! They've only given him another hat to talk through! They'll have to do their work all over again, unless Louis takes my advice and travels abroad for his health."

These words were prophetic, for barely two months later the second and most terrible and portentous attack upon the palace took place- an attack which Napoleon witnessed, as he had witnessed the first, from a convenient lamp-post, and which filled him with disgust and shame; and it was upon that night of riot and bloodshed that he gave utterance to one of his most famous sayings.

"Bourrienne," said he, as with his faithful companions he laboriously climbed the five flights of stairs leading to his humble apartment, "I hate the aristocrats, as you know; and to-day has made me hate the populace as well. What is there left to like?"

"Alas! lieutenant, I cannot say," said Bourrienne, shaking his head sadly.

"What," continued Napoleon, "is the good of anything?"

"I give it up," returned Bourrienne, with a sigh. "I never was good at riddles. What IS the good of anything?"

"Nothing!" said Napoleon, laconically, as he took off his uniform and went to bed.