Ida Tarbell

McClure’s Magazine/November, 1894

“If I were not convinced that his family is as old and as good as my own,” said the Emperor of Austria when he married Marie Louise to Napoleon Bonaparte, “I would not give him my daughter.” The remark is sufficient recognition of the nobility of the father of Napoleon, Charles Marie de Bonaparte, a gentleman of Ajaccio, Corsica, whose family, of Tuscan origin, had settled there in the sixteenth century, and who, in 1765, had married a young girl of the island, Lætitia Ramolino.

Monsieur Bonaparte gave his wife a noble name, but little else. He was an indolent, pleasure-loving, chimerical man, who had inherited a lawsuit, and whose time was absorbed in the hopeless task of recovering an estate of which the Church had taken possession. Madame Bonaparte brought her husband no great name, but she did bring him health, beauty, and remarkable qualities.

Tall and imposing, Mademoiselle Lætitia Ramolino had a superb carriage, which she never lost, and a face which attracted attention particularly by the accentuation and perfection of its features. She was reserved, but of ceaseless energy and will, and though but fifteen when married, she conducted her family affairs with such good sense and firmness that she was able to bring up decently the eight children spared her from the thirteen she bore. The habits of order and economy formed in her years of struggle became so firmly rooted in her character that later, when she became mater regum, the “Madame Mère” of an imperial court, she could not put them aside, but saved from the generous income at her disposal, “for those of my children who are not yet settled,” she said. Throughout her life she showed the truth of her son’s characterization: “A man’s head on a woman’s body.”

The first years after their marriage were stormy ones for the Bonapartes. The Corsicans, led by the patriot Pascal Paoli, were in revolt against the French, at that time masters of the island. Among Paoli’s followers was Charles Bonaparte. He shared the fortunes of his chief to the end of the struggle of 1769, and when, finally, Paoli was hopelessly defeated, took to the mountains. In all the dangers and miseries of this war and flight, Charles Bonaparte was accompanied by his wife, who, vigorous of body and brave of heart, suffered privations, dangers, and fatigue without complaint. When the Corsicans submitted, the Bonapartes went back to Ajaccio. Six weeks later Madame Bonaparte gave birth to her fourth child, Napoleon.

“I was born,” said Napoleon, “when my country was perishing. Thirty thousand Frenchmen were vomited upon our soil; the throne of our liberty was drowned in a sea of blood! This was the odious sight on which my eyes opened. Cries of the wounded, sighs of the oppressed, and tears of despair surrounded my cradle at my birth.”

Young Bonaparte learned to hate with the fierceness peculiar to Corsican blood the idea of oppression, to revere Paoli, and, with a boy’s contempt of necessity, even to despise his father’s submission. It was not strange. His mother had little time for her children’s training. His father gave them no attention; and Napoleon, “obstinate and curious,” domineering over his brothers and companions, fearing no one, ran wild on the beach with the sailors or over the mountains with the herdsmen, listening to their tales of the Corsican rebellion and of fights, on sea and land, imbibing their contempt for submission, their love for liberty.

At nine years of age he was a shy, proud, wilful child, unkempt and untrained, little, pale, and nervous, almost without instruction, and yet already enamored of a soldier’s life and conscious of a certain superiority over his comrades. Then it was that he was suddenly transplanted from his free life to an environment foreign in its language, artificial in its etiquette, and severe in its regulations.

At School in Brienne

His father, having obtained a place for him in the government military school at Brienne, took him and his elder brother Joseph, in December, 1778, when he was nine and a half years of age, to a preparatory school at Autun, where the boys, who up to this time had spoken nothing but Italian, were to learn French. Three months at Autun gave young Napoleon enough of the new language to do his exercises; thereupon he was separated from his brother and sent alone to Brienne.

From the first the atmosphere at Brienne was hateful to him. His comrades were French, and it was the French who had subdued Corsica. They taunted him with it sometimes, and he told them that had there been but four to one, Corsica would never have been conquered, but that the French came ten to one. When they said: “But your father submitted,” he said bitterly: “I shall never forgive him for it.” As for Paoli, he told them, proudly, “He is a good man. I wish I could be like him.”

He had trouble with the new language. They jeered at him because of it. His name was strange; la paille au nez was the nickname they made from Napoleon. He was poor; they were rich. The contemptuous treatment he received because of his poverty was such that he begged to be taken home.

“My father,” he wrote, “if you or my protectors cannot give me the means of sustaining myself more honorably in the house where I am, please let me return home as soon as possible. I am tired of poverty and of the jeers of insolent scholars who are superior to me only in their fortune, for there is not one among them who feels one hundredth part of the noble sentiment which animates me. Must your son, sir, continually be the butt of these boobies, who, vain of the luxuries which they enjoy, insult me by their laughter at the privations which I am forced to endure? No, father, no! If fortune refuses to smile upon me, take me from Brienne, and make me, if you will, a mechanic. From these words you may judge of my despair. This letter, sir, please believe, is not dictated by a vain desire to enjoy extravagant amusements. I have no such wish. I feel simply that it is necessary to show my companions that I can procure them as well as they, if I wish to do so.

“Your respectful and affectionate son,

“Bonaparte.”

Charles Bonaparte, always in pursuit of pleasure and his inheritance, could not help his son. Napoleon made other attempts to escape, even offering himself, it is said, to the British Admiralty as a sailor. In the end Napoleon saw that there was no way for him but to remain at Brienne, galled by poverty and formalism.

It would be unreasonable to suppose that there was no relief to this sombre life. Young Napoleon won recognition more than once from his companions by his bravery and skill in defending his rights. There is a story of a sieve laid to an out-of-door nook which he had chosen for a study, in memory, perhaps of the famous grotto in Ajaccio, where he had dreamed so often. He repulsed his assailants so valiantly that he not only won a right to his corner, but their applause. All the world knows the story of the snow-fort of which he was in turn engineer-in-chief and leader of the besieging force. He was not only valorous; he was generous, and “preferred going to prison himself to denouncing his comrades who had done wrong.” Young Napoleon found, in short, that if there were things for which he was ridiculed, there were others for which he was applauded.

He made friends, particularly among his teachers; and to one of his comrades, Bourrienne, he remained attached for years. “You never laugh at me; you like me,” he said to his friend. Those who found him morose and surly, did not realize that beneath the reserved, sullen exterior of the little Corsican boy there was a proud and passionate heart aching for love and recognition; that it was sensitiveness rather than arrogance which drove him away from his mates.

At the end of five and one-half years Napoleon was promoted to the military school at Paris. The choice of pupils for this school was made by an inspector, at this time one Chevalier de Kéralio, an amiable old man, who was fond of mingling with the boys as well as examining them. He was particularly pleased with Napoleon, and named him for promotion in spite of his being strong in nothing but mathematics, and not yet being of the age required by the regulations. The teachers protested, but De Kéralio insisted:

“I know what I am doing,” he said. “If I put the rules aside in this case, it is not to do his family a favor—I do not know them. It is because of the child himself. I have seen a spark here which cannot be too carefully cultivated.”

De Kéralio died before the nominations were made, but his wishes in regard to young Bonaparte were carried out. The recommendation which sent him up is curious. The notes read:

“Monsieur de Bonaparte; height four feet, ten inches and ten lines; he has passed his fourth examination; good constitution, excellent health; submissive character, frank and grateful; regular in conduct; has distinguished himself by his application to mathematics; is passably well up in history and geography; is behindhand in his Latin. Will make an excellent sailor. Deserves to be sent to the school in Paris.”

In Paris

It was in October, 1784, that Napoleon was placed in the Ecole Militaire at Paris, the same school which still faces the Champ de Mars. He was fifteen years old at the time, a thin-faced, awkward, countrified boy, who stared open-mouthed at the Paris street sights and seemed singularly out of place to those who saw him in the capital for the first time.

Napoleon found his new associates even more distasteful than those at Brienne had been. The pupils of the Ecole Militaire were sons of soldiers and provincial gentlemen, educated gratuitously, and rich young men who paid for their privileges. The practices of the school were luxurious. There was a large staff of servants, costly stables, several courses at meals. Those who were rich spent freely; most of those who were poor ran in debt. Napoleon could not pay his share in the lunches and gifts which his mates offered now and then to teachers and fellows. He saw his sister Eliza, who was at Madame de Maintenon’s school at St. Cyr, weep one day for the same reason. He would not borrow. “My mother has already too many expenses, and I have no business to increase them by extravagances which are simply imposed upon me by the stupid folly of my comrades.” But he did complain loudly to his friends. The Permons, a Corsican family living on the Quai Conti, who made Napoleon thoroughly at home with them, even holding a room at his disposal, frequently discussed these complaints. Was it vanity and envy, or a wounded pride and just indignation? The latter, said Monsieur Permon. This feeling was so profound with Napoleon, that, with his natural instinct of regulating whatever was displeasing to him, he prepared a memorial to the Government, full of good, practical sense, on the useless luxury of the pupils.

A year at Paris finished Napoleon’s military education, and in October, 1785, when sixteen years old, he received his appointment as second lieutenant of the artillery in a regiment stationed at Valence. Out of the fifty-eight pupils entitled that year to the promotion of second lieutenant, but six went to the artillery; of these six, Napoleon was one. His examiner said of him:

“Reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors; applies himself earnestly to the abstract sciences; cares little for anything else. He is silent and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively egotistical; talks little, but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in his repartees; has great pride and ambitions, aspiring to anything. The young man is worthy of patronage.”

Lieutenant of Artillery

He left Paris at once, on money borrowed from a cloth merchant whom his father had patronized, not sorry, probably, that his school-days were over, though it is certain that all of those who had been friendly to him in this period he never forgot in the future. Several of his old teachers at Brienne received pensions; one was made rector of the School of Fine Arts established at Compiegne, another librarian at Malmaison, where the porter was the former porter of Brienne. The professors of the Ecole Militaire were equally well taken care of, as well as many of his schoolmates. Generous, forbearing, even tender remembrance of all who had been associated with him in his early years, was one of Napoleon’s marked characteristics.

His new position was not brilliant. He had an annual income of two hundred and twenty-four dollars, and there was much hard work. It was independence, however, and life opened gayly to the young officer. He made many acquaintances, and for the first time saw something of society and women. Madame Colombier, whose salon was the leading one of the town, received him, introduced him to powerful friends, and, indeed, prophesied a great future for him.

The sixteen-year-old officer, in spite of his shabby clothes and big boots, became a favorite. He talked brilliantly and freely, began to find that he could please, and, for the first time, made love a little—to Mademoiselle Colombier—a frolicking boy-and-girl love, the object of whose stolen rendezvous was to eat cherries together. Mademoiselle Mion-Desplaces, a pretty Corsican girl in Valence, also received some attention from him. Encouraged by his good beginning, and ambitious for future success, he even began to take dancing lessons.

Care of His Family

Had there been no one but himself to think of, everything would have gone easily, but the care of his family was upon him. His father had died a few months before, February, 1785, and left his affairs in a sad tangle. Joseph, now nearly eighteen years of age, who had gone to Autun in 1778 with Napoleon, had remained there until 1785. The intention was to make him a priest; suddenly he declared that he would not be anything but a soldier. It was to undo all that had been done for him; but his father made an effort to get him into a military school. Before the arrangements were complete he died, and Joseph was obliged to return to Corsica, where he was powerless to do anything for his mother and for the four young children at home: Louis, aged nine; Pauline, seven; Caroline, five; Jerome, three.

Lucien, now nearly eleven years old, was at Brienne, refusing to become a soldier, as his family desired, and giving his time to literature; but he was not a free pupil, and the six hundred francs a year needful for him was a heavy tax. Eliza alone was provided for. She had entered St. Cyr in 1784 as one of the two hundred and fifty pupils supported there by his Majesty, and to be a demoiselle de St. Cyr was to be fed, taught, and clothed from seven to twenty, and, on leaving, to receive a dowry of three thousand francs, a trousseau, and one hundred and fifty francs for travelling expenses home.

Napoleon regarded his family’s situation more seriously than did his brothers. Indeed, when at Brienne he had shown an interest, a sense of responsibility, and a good judgment about the future of his brothers and sisters, quite amazing in a boy of thirteen. His advice had usually been considered by Charles Bonaparte, and it was with reason that his uncle Lucien said, before dying: “Remember, that if Joseph is the older, Napoleon is the real head of the house.” The letter sent by Napoleon to his mother at the death of his father shows the strength of his feeling towards his parents:

PARIS, March 29, 1785.

MY DEAR MOTHER:

Now that time has begun to soften the first transports of my sorrow, I hasten to express to you the gratitude I feel for all the kindness you have always displayed towards us. Console yourself, dear mother; circumstances require that you should. We will redouble our care and our gratitude, happy if, by our obedience, we can make up to you in the smallest degree for the inestimable loss of a cherished husband. I finish, dear mother—my grief compels it—by praying you to calm yours. My health is perfect, and my daily prayer is that Heaven may grant you the same. NAPOLEONE DE BUONAPARTE.

Now that young Bonaparte was in an independent position, he felt still more keenly his responsibility, and it was for this reason. as well as because of ill-health, that he left his regiment in February, 1787, on a leave which he extended to nearly fifteen months, and which he spent in energetic efforts to better their situation, working to reestablish salt works and a mulberry plantation in which they were concerned, to secure the nomination of Lucien to the college at Aix, and to place Louis at a French military school.

Literary Work

When he went back to his regiment, now stationed at Auxonne, he denied himself to send money home, and spent his leisure in desperate work, sleeping but six hours, eating but one meal a day, dressing once in the week. He had a serious piece of work on hand. Fearful that the career of a soldier was too slow a means of gaining wealth and fame, he had attempted literature, and at this moment was finishing a history of Corsica, a portion of which he had written at Valence and submitted to the Abbe Raynal, who had encouraged him to go on. In fact, Napoleon had many literary projects on hand. He had been a prodigious reader, and was never so happy as when he could save a few sous for bouquinerie. From everything he read he made long extracts, and kept a book of “thoughts.” Most curious are some of these fragments, reflections on the beginning of society, on love, on nature. They show that he was passionately absorbed in forming ideas of the great questions of life and its relations.

Besides his history of Corsica, he had already written several fragments, among them a romance, an historical drama called the “Count of Essex,” and a story, the “Masque Prophete.” He undertook, too, to write a sentimental journey in the style of Sterne, describing a trip from Valence to Mont-Cenis. Later he competed for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject: “To determine what truths and feelings should be inculcated in men for their happiness.” He failed in the contest; indeed, the essay was severely criticized for its incoherency and poor style.

The Revolution of 1789 turned Napoleon’s mind to an ambition greater than that of writing the history of Corsica—he would free Corsica. The National Assembly had lifted the island from its inferior relation and made it a department of France, but sentiment was much divided. Napoleon, deeply interested in the progress of the new liberal ideas, and seeing, too, the opportunity for a soldier and an agitator among his countrymen, hastened home, where he spent some twenty-five months out of the next two and a half years.

Privation and Economies

Revolutionary agitation did not absorb all his time. Never did he work harder for his family. The portion of this period which he spent in France he was accompanied by Louis, whose tutor he had become, and he suffered every deprivation to help him. Napoleon’s income at that time was sixty-five cents a day. This meant that he must live in wretched rooms, prepare himself the broth on which he and his brother dined, never go to a cafe, brush his own clothes, give Louis lessons. He did it bravely. “I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted my door on my poverty,” he said once to a young officer complaining of the economies he must make on two hundred dollars a month.

Economy and privation were always more supportable to him than borrowing. He detested irregularities in financial matters. “Your finances are deplorably conducted, apparently on metaphysical principles. Believe me, money is a very physical thing,” he once said to Joseph, when the latter, as King of Naples, could not make both ends meet. He put Jerome to sea largely to stop his reckless expenditures. (At fifteen that young man paid three thousand two hundred dollars for a shaving case “containing everything except the beard to enable its owner to use it.”) Some of the most furious scenes which occurred between Napoleon and Josephine were because she was continually in debt. After the divorce he frequently cautioned her to be watchful of her money. “Think what a bad opinion I would have of you if I knew you were in debt with an income of six hundred thousand dollars a year,” he wrote her in 1813.

The methodical habits of Marie Louise were a constant satisfaction to Napoleon. “She settles all her accounts once a week, deprives herself of new gowns if necessary, and imposes privations upon herself in order to keep out of debt,” he said proudly. A bill of sixty-two francs and thirty-two centimes was once sent to him for window blinds placed in the salon of the Princess Borghese. “As I did not order this expenditure, which ought not to be charged to my budget, the princess will pay it,” he wrote on the margin.

It was not parsimony. It was the man’ sense of order. No one was more generous in gifts, pensions, salaries; but it irritated him to see money wasted or managed carelessly.

Napoleon and the Revolution

Through his long absence in Corsica, and the complaints which the conservatives of the island had made to the French government of the way he had handled his battalion of National Guards in a riot at Ajaccio, Napoleon lost his place in the French army. He came to Paris in the spring of 1792, hoping to regain it. But in the confused condition of public affairs little attention was given to such cases, and he was obliged to wait.

Almost penniless, he dined on six-cent dishes in cheap restaurants, pawned his watch, and with Bourrienne devised schemes for making a fortune. One was to rent some new houses going up in the city and to sub-let them. While he waited he saw the famous days of the “Second Revolution”—the 20th of June, when the mob surrounded the Tuileries, overrun the palace, put the bonnet rouge on Louis XVI’s head, did everything but strike, as the agitators had intended. Napoleon and Bourrienne, loitering on the outskirts, saw the outrages, and he said, in disgust:

“Che coglione, why did they allow these brutes to come in? They ought to have shot down five or six hundred of them with cannon, and the rest would soon have run.”

He saw the 10th of August, when the king was deposed. He was still in Paris when the horrible September massacres began—those massacres in which, to “save the country,” the fanatical and terrified populace resolved to put “rivers of blood” between Paris and the emigrés. All these excesses filled him with disgust. He began to understand that the Revolution he admired so much needed a head.

In August Napoleon was restored to the army. The following June found him with his regiment in the south of France. In the interval spent in Corsica he had abandoned Paoli and the cause of Corsican independence. His old hero had been dragged, in spite of himself, into a movement for separating the island from France. Napoleon felt that the French government, whatever its excesses, was the only advocate in Europe of liberty and equality, and he preferred that Corsica should remain with France rather than to seek English aid, as it must if it revolted. But he and his party were defeated, and he with his family was obliged to flee.

The Corsican period of his life was over; the French opens. He begins it as a thorough republican. The evolution of his enthusiasm for the Revolution had been natural enough. He had been a devoted believer in Rousseau’s principles. The year 1789 had struck down the abuses which galled him in French society and government.

As he wrote, “the nation is now the paramount object; my natural inclinations are now in harmony with my duties.”

The efforts of the court and the emigrés to overthrow the new government had increased his devotion to France. “My southern blood leaps in my veins with the rapidity of the Rhone,” he said, when the question of the preservation of the Constitution was brought up. The months spent at Paris in 1792 had only intensified his radical notions.

First Success

The condition of the Bonapartes on arriving in France after their expulsion from Corsica was abject. Their property “pillaged, sacked, and burned,” they had escaped penniless—were, in fact, refugees dependent upon French bounty. They wandered from place to place and soon found a good friend in Monsieur Clary of Marseilles, a soap-boiler, with two pretty daughters, Julie and Desiree, and Joseph and Napoleon became inmates of his house.

It was not as a soldier but as a writer that Napoleon first distinguished himself in this new period of his life. An insurrection against the government had arisen in Marseilles. In an imaginary conversation called le souper de Beaucaire, Napoleon discussed the situation so clearly and justly that Salicetti, Gasparin, and Robespierre the younger, the deputies who were looking after the South, ordered the paper published at public expense, and distributed it as a campaign document. More, they promised to favor the author when they had an opportunity.

It soon came. Toulon had opened its doors to the English and joined Marseilles in a counter-revolution. Napoleon was in the force sent against the town, and he was soon promoted to the command of the Second Regiment of artillery. His energy and skill won him favorable attention. He saw at once that the important point was not besieging the town, as the general in command was doing and the Convention had ordered, but in forcing the allied fleet from the harbor, when the town must fall of itself. But the commander-in-chief was stupid, and it was not until the command was changed and an officer of experience and wisdom put in charge that Napoleon’s plans were listened to. The new general saw at once their value and hastened to carry them out. The result was the withdrawal of the allies in December, 1793, and the fall of Toulon. Bonaparte was mentioned by the general-in-chief as “one of those who have most distinguished themselves in aiding me,” and in February, 1794, was made general of brigade.

It is interesting to note that it was at Toulon that Napoleon first came in contact with the English. Here he made the acquaintance of Junot, Marmont, and Duroc. Barras, too, had his attention drawn to him at this time.

The circumstances which brought Junot and Napoleon together at Toulon were especially heroic. Someone was needed to carry an order to an exposed point. Napoleon asked for an under-officer, audacious and intelligent. Junot, then a sergeant, was sent. “Take off your uniform and carry this order there,” said Napoleon, indicating the point.

Junot blushed and his eyes flashed. “I am not a spy,” he answered; “find someone beside me to execute such an order.”

“You refuse to obey?” said Napoleon.

“I am ready to obey,” answered Junot, “but I will go in my uniform or not go at all. It is honor enough then for these  ̶  Englishmen.”

The officer smiled and let him go, but he took pains to find out his name.

A few days later Napoleon called for someone in the ranks who wrote a fine hand to come to him. Junot offered himself, and sat down close to the battery to write the letter. He had scarcely finished when a bomb thrown by the English burst nearby and covered him and his letter with earth.

“Good,” said Junot, laughing, “I shall not need any sand to dry the ink.”

Bonaparte looked at the young man, who had not even trembled at the danger. From that time the young sergeant remained with the commander of artillery.

The favors granted Napoleon for his services at Toulon were extended to his family. Madame Bonaparte was helped by the municipality of Marseilles. Joseph was made commissioner of war. Lucien was joined to the Army of Italy, and in the town where he was stationed became famous as a popular orator—“little Robespierre,” they called him. He began, too, here to make love to his landlord’s daughter, Christine Boyer, afterwards his wife.

Napoleon and the Robespierres

The outlook for the refugees seemed very good, and it was made still brighter by the very particular friendship of the younger Robespierre for Napoleon. This friendship was soon increased by the part Napoleon played in a campaign of a month with the Army of Italy, when, largely by his genius, the seaboard from Nice to Genoa was put into French power. If this victory were much for the army and for Robespierre, it was more for Napoleon. He looked from the Tende, and saw for the first time that in Italy there was “a land for a conqueror.” Robespierre wrote to his brother, the real head of the government at the moment, that Napoleon possessed “transcendent merit.” He engaged him to draw up a plan for a campaign against Piedmont, and sent him on a secret mission to Genoa. Thus things began to go well for Bonaparte. His poverty passed. His brothers received good positions; Joseph was betrothed to Julie Clary, and life went gayly at Nice and Marseilles, where Napoleon had about him many of his friends—Robespierre and his sister; his own two pretty sisters; Marmont, and Junot who was deeply in love with Pauline.

On the 9th Thermidor Robespierre fell, and all who had favored him were suspected, Napoleon among the rest. His secret mission to Genoa gave a pretext for his arrest, and for thirteen days he was a prisoner, but through his friends was liberated.

The connections of Napoleon with Robespierre the elder have often been quoted against him. That he never favored the excesses of the Terror, all those who knew him testify, and there are many stories of his efforts at this time to save emigrés and suspects from the violence of the rabid patriots—even to save the English imprisoned at Toulon.

That he admired the powers of Robespierre is unquestionable. He was certain that if he had “remained in power, he would have reestablished order and law; the result would have been attained without any shocks, because it would have come through the quiet exercise of power.” Nevertheless, it is certain that Napoleon was unwilling to come into close contact with him, as his refusal to go to Paris to take the command of the garrison of the city shows. No doubt his refusal was partly due to his ambition—he thought the opening better where he was—and partly due, too, to his dislike of the excesses which the government was practising. He always remembered Robespierre the younger with kindness, and when he was in power gave Charlotte Robespierre a pension.

Out of Work

In April, 179S, Napoleon received orders to join the Army of the West. When he reached Paris he found that it was the infantry to which he was assigned. Such a change was considered a disgrace in the army. He refused to go. It was the collapse of what seemed to be a career, the shutting of the gate he had worked so fiercely to open. He must begin again, and he did not see how.

A sort of despair settled over him. “He declaimed against fate,” says the Duchesse d’Abrantes. “I was idle and discontented,” he says of himself. He went to the theatre and sat sullen and inattentive through the gayest of plays. “He had moments of fierce hilarity,” says Bourrienne.

A pathetic distaste of effort came over him at times; he wanted to settle. “If I could have that house,” he said one day to Bourrienne, pointing to an empty house nearby, “with my friends and a cabriolet, I should be the happiest of men.” He clung to his friends with a sort of desperation, and his letters to Joseph are touching in the extreme.

Love as well as failure caused his melancholy. All about him, indeed, turned his thoughts to marriage. Joseph was now married, and his happiness made him envious. “What a lucky rascal Joseph is!” he said. Junot, madly in love with Pauline, was with him. The two young men wandered through the alleys of the Jardin des Plantes and discussed Junot’s passion. In listening to his friend, Napoleon thought of himself. He had been touched by Desiree Clary, Joseph’s sister-in-law; a charming girl, with beautiful eyes and a sweet smile, though absurdly romantic. Why not try to win her? And he begins to demand news of her from Joseph. Desiree has asked for his portrait, and he writes: “I shall have it taken for her; you must give it to her, if she still wants it; if not, keep it yourself.” He is cross when he does not have news of her, accuses Joseph of purposely omitting her name from his letters, and Desiree herself of forgetting him. At last he consults Joseph: “If I remain here, it is just possible that I might feel inclined to commit the folly of marrying. I should be glad of a line from you on the subject. You might perhaps speak to Eugenie’s [Desiree’s] brother and let me know what he says, and then it will be settled.” He waits the answer to his overtures “with impatience”; urges his brother to arrange things so that nothing “may prevent that which I long for.” But Desiree was obdurate. Later she married Bernadotte and became Queen of Sweden.

Yet in all these varying moods he was never idle. As three years before he and Bourrienne indulged in financial speculations; he tried to persuade Joseph to invest his wife’s dot in the property of the emigrés, and he pushed his brothers as if he had no personal ambition. One of his plans for himself was to go to Turkey. For two or three years, in fact, Napoleon had thought of the Orient as a possible field for his genius, and his mother had often worried lest he should go. Just now it happened that the Sultan of Turkey asked the French for aid in reorganizing his artillery and perfecting the defences of his forts, and Napoleon asked to be allowed to undertake the work. While pushing this plan with extraordinary enthusiasm, even writing Joseph almost daily letters about what he would do for him when he was settled in the Orient, he was called to do a piece of work which was to be of importance in his future.

The war committee needed plans for an Italian campaign; the head of the committee was in great perplexity. Nobody knew anything about the condition of things in the South. By chance, one day, one of Napoleon’s acquaintances heard of the difficulties and recommended the young general. The memorial he prepared was so excellent that he was invited into the topographical bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His knowledge, sense, energy, fire were so remarkable that he made strong friends and became at once an important personage.