The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
February thirteenth; he left it on June fourteenth. With these four months his total service was five years and nine months; but he had been absent, with or without leave, something more than half the time! His old friends in Auxonne were few in number, if indeed there were any at all. No doubt his fellow-officers were tired of performing the absentee's duties, and of good-fellowship there could be in any case but little, with such difference of taste, politics, and fortune as there was between him and them. However, he made a few new friends; but it was in the main the old solitary life which he resumed. His own room was in a cheap lodging-house, and, according to the testimony of a visitor, furnished with a wretched uncurtained couch, a table, and two chairs. Louis slept on a pallet in a closet near by. All pleasures but those of hope were utterly banished from those plucky lives, while they studied in preparation for the examination which might admit the younger to his brother's corps. The elder pinched and scraped to pay the younger's board; himself, according to a probable but rather untrustworthy account, brushing his own clothes that they might last longer, and supping often on dry bread. His only place of resort was the political club. One single pleasure he allowed himself—the occasional purchase of some long-coveted volume from the shelves of a town bookseller.[24]
Of course neither authorship nor publication was forgotten. During these months were completed the two short pieces, a "Dialogue on Love," and the acute "Reflections on the State of Nature," from both of which quotations have already been given. "I too was once in love," he says of himself in the former. It could not well have been in Ajaccio, and it must have been the memories of the old Valence, of a pleasant existence now ended, which called forth the doleful confession. It was the future Napoleon who was presaged in the antithesis. "I go further than the denial of its existence; I believe it hurtful to society, to the individual welfare of men." The other trenchant document demolishes the cherished hypothesis of Rousseau as to man in a state of nature. The precious manuscripts brought from Corsica were sent to the only publisher in the neighborhood, at Dôle. The much-revised history was refused; the other—whether by moneys furnished from the Ajaccio club, or at the author's risk, is not known—was printed in a slim octavo volume of twenty-one pages, and published with the title, "Letter of Buonaparte to Buttafuoco." A copy was at once sent to Paoli with a renewed request for such documents as would enable the writer to complete his pamphlet on Corsica. The patriot again replied in a very discouraging tone: Buttafuoco was too contemptible for notice, the desired papers he was unable to send, and such a boy could not in any case be a historian. Buonaparte was undismayed and continued his researches. Joseph was persuaded to add his solicitations for the desired papers to those of his brother, but he too received a flat refusal.
Short as was Buonaparte's residence at Auxonne, he availed himself to the utmost of the slackness of discipline in order to gratify his curiosity as to the state of the country. He paid frequent visits to Marmont in Dijon, and he made what he called at St. Helena his "Sentimental Journey to Nuits" in Burgundy. The account he gave Las Cases of the aristocracy in the little city, and of its assemblies at the mansion of a wine-merchant's widow, is most entertaining. To his host Gassendi and to the worthy mayor he aired his radical doctrines with great complacence, but according to his own account he had not the best of it in the discussions which ensued. Under the empire Gassendi's son was a member of the council of state, and in one of its sessions he dared to support some of his opinions by quoting Napoleon himself. The Emperor remembered perfectly the conversation at Nuits, but meaningly said that his friend must have been asleep and dreaming.
Several traditions which throw some light on Buonaparte's attitude toward religion date from this last residence in Auxonne. He had been prepared for confirmation at Brienne by a confessor who was now in retirement at Dôle, the same to whom when First Consul he wrote an acknowledgment of his indebtedness, adding: "Without religion there is no happiness, no future possible. I commend me to your prayers." The dwelling of this good man was the frequent goal of his walks abroad. Again, he once jocularly asked a friend who visited him in his room, if he had heard mass that morning, opening, as he spoke, a trunk, in which was the complete vestment of a priest. The regimental chaplain, who must have been his friend, had confided it to him for safe-keeping. Finally, it was in these dark and never-forgotten days of trial that Louis was confirmed, probably by the advice of his brother. Even though Napoleon had collaborated with Fesch in the paper on the oath of priests to the constitution, though he himself had been mobbed in Corsica as the enemy of the Church, it does not appear that he had any other than decent and reverent feelings toward religion and its professors.
CHAPTER XII.
The Revolution in the Rhone Valley.
A Dark Period—Buonaparte, First Lieutenant—Second Sojourn in Valence—Books and Reading—The National Assembly of France—The King Returns from Versailles—Administrative Reforms in France—Passing of the Old Order—Flight of the King—Buonaparte's Oath to Sustain the Constitution—His View of the Situation—His Revolutionary Zeal—Insubordination—Impatience with Delay—A Serious Blunder Avoided—Return to Corsica.
1791.
The tortuous course of Napoleon's life for the years from 1791 to 1795 has been neither described nor understood by those who have written in his interest. It was his own desire that his biographies, in spite of the fact that his public life began after Rivoli, should commence with the recovery of Toulon for the Convention. His detractors, on the other hand, have studied this prefatory period with such evident bias that dispassionate readers have been repelled from its consideration. And yet the sordid tale well repays perusal; for in this epoch of his life many of his characteristic qualities were tempered and ground to the keen edge they retained throughout. Swept onward toward the trackless ocean of political chaos, the youth seemed afloat without oars or compass: in reality, his craft was well under control, and his chart correct. Whether we attribute his conduct to accident or to design, from an adventurer's point of view the instinct which made him spread his sails to the breezes of Jacobin favor was quite as sound as that which later, when Jacobinism came to be abhorred, made him anxious that the fact should be forgotten.
In the earlier stages of army reorganization, changes were made without much regard to personal merit, the dearth of efficient officers being such that even the most indifferent had some value. About the first of June, 1791, Buonaparte was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant, with a salary of thirteen hundred livres, and transferred to the Fourth Regiment, which was in Valence. He heard the news with mingled feelings: promotion was, of course, welcome, but he shrank from returning to his former station, and from leaving the three or four warm friends he had among his comrades in the old regiment. On the ground that the arrangements he had made for educating Louis would be disturbed by the transfer, he besought the war office for permission to remain at Auxonne with the regiment, now known as the First. Probably the real ground of his disinclination was the fear that a residence at Valence might revive the painful emotions which time had somewhat withered. He may also have felt how discordant the radical opinions he was beginning to hold would be with those still cherished by his former friends. But the authorities were inexorable, and on June fourteenth the brothers departed, Napoleon for the first time leaving debts which he could not discharge: for the new uniform of a first lieutenant, a sword, and some wood, he owed about a hundred and fifteen livres. This sum he was careful to pay within a few years and as soon as his affairs permitted.
Arrived at Valence, he found that the old society had vanished. Both the bishop and the Abbé Saint-Ruf were dead. Mme. du Colombier had withdrawn with her daughter to her country-seat. The brothers were able, therefore, to take up their lives just where they had made the break at Auxonne: Louis pursuing the studies necessary for entrance to the corps of officers, Napoleon teaching him, and frequenting the political club; both destitute and probably suffering, for the officer's pay was soon far in arrears. In such desperate straits it was a relief for the elder brother that the allurements of his former associations were dissipated; such companionship as he now had was among the middle and lower classes, whose estates were more proportionate to his own, and whose sentiments were virtually identical with those which he professed.
The list of books which