OCR Text |
Show YOUNG NAPOLEON DESPONDENT. Bad News Frm His Home Made the Artillery Ar-tillery man Talk of Suicide. Early in August, 1787, a little rebellion, rebel-lion, known as the "Two Cent Revolt," broke out in Lyons over an attempt to reassert an ancient feudal right concern Ing the sale of wine which had long oeen in abeyance. The neighboring garrisons gar-risons were ordered to furnish their rs Epective quotas for its Suppression. Bonaparte's company was sent among the others, but the disturbance was already al-ready quelled when he arrived, and the month he spent at Lyons was so agreeable agree-able that, as he wrote his uncle Fesch, be left the city with regret "to follow his destiny." His regiment had been ordered northward to Douay, in Flanders, Flan-ders, and there he rejoined it about the middle cf October. The 6hort time he spent tinder the inclement in-clement skies of that frontier fortress was a dreary one. Bad news came from home. Joseph had some time before turned his eyes toward Tuscany for a possible career. In order to test his chances of success at court, ho had made I application for an empty decoration j j The answer to his request had beou ft j eracious permission to prove his Tuscan nationality, which was of course equivalent equiv-alent to a repulse. Utterly without success suc-cess in finding occupation in Corsica and hopeless as tc France, he was now about to make a final desperate effort and, decorated or not, to go in person to Florence and to seek employment of any kind which offered. Lucien, the archdeacon, arch-deacon, was seriously ill, and General Slarbeuf, the last influential friend of the family, was dead. . Louis had been, promised a scholarship in one of the royal artillery Echools. Deprived of his patron, he would probably lose the appointment. ap-pointment. Finally the pecuniary affairs of Mme. fle Bonaparte were again entangled and now appeared hopeless. She had for Borne time received a state bounty for planting mulberry trees, as France waa Introducing silk culture into the island. The inspectors had condemned the year's work and were withholding the allowance. allow-ance. Her letter put an end for a time to all study, historical or political. Napoleon Na-poleon immediately applied, as his mother requested, for leave of absence, that he might instantly se out to her relief. His request was refused. He sould obtain no leave until January. Despondent and anxious, he moped, grew miserable and contracted a slight malarial fever, which for the next six or seven years never entirely relaxed Its hold on him. The pages of his journal jour-nal for the ensuing weeks show how dispirited he was, and contain, among other things, a long, wild, pessimistic rhapsody, in which there is talk of suicide. sui-cide. The plaint 13 of the degeneracy among men, of the destruction of primitive prim-itive simplicity in Corsica by the French occupation, of his own isolation and of his yearning to see his friends onde mora Life is no longer worth while. His country gone, a patriot has naught to live for, specially when he has no pleasure pleas-ure and all is pain, when the chtrao-ter chtrao-ter of those about him is to his oif n a moonlight to sunlight If therf. tvero but a single life in his way, he ipouM bury tho avenging blade of his wron'iry and her violated laws in the bosora of the tyrant. Some of his complaining was even less coherent than this. It ia absurd to take tho morbid oatrouring seriously, except in so far aj t goes to prove that its writer was u victim of the sentimental egoism into which the psychological studies of the eighteenth century had degenerated and to suggest sug-gest that possibly if he nad not been Napoleon he mi&ht havo teen a Wer-ther. Wer-ther. Professoi Sloane'ft "life of Napoleon" Napo-leon" in Centm.y. |