San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1895-02-14
NAPoLEoN'S DESPONoENCY.
Bad News from His Home Made Him
Talk of Suicide.


Talk of Suicide.
The agreeable and studious life at
Valence was soon ended, writes Prof.
Sloane in Century. Early in August,
1887, little rebellion, known as the
''Two-cent Revolt" broke out in Lyons
over an attempt to reassert an ancient
feudal right concerning the sale of wine
which had long been in allegiance. The
neighboring garrisons were ordered to
furnish their respective quotas for it's
suppression. Bonaparte's company was
sent among others, but the disturban
was already quelled when he arrived,
and the month he spent at Lyons was
so agreeable that, as he wrote his uncle
Fesch, he left the city with regret Ito
follow his destiny" His regiment had
been ordered nOrthward to Douay in
Flanders, and there he rejoined it about
the middle of October.
The short time he spent under the in.
clement skies of that frontier fortress
was dreary one. Bad news came from
home. Joseph had some time before
turned his eyes towards Tuscany for
possible career. In order to test his
chances of success at court, he had
made application for an empty decora-
ton. The answer to his request had
been a gracious permission to prove his
Tuscan nationality, which was, of
course, equivalent to a repulse. Utterly
without success in finding occupation
in Corsica, an d hopeless as to France, he
was now about to make a final desper-
ate effort, and, decorated or not, to go
in person to Florence and to seek en-
ployment of any kind which offered. |
Lucien, the archdeacOn, was seriously
i'll, and Gen. Marbeuf, the last inhuen- |
tial friend of the family, was dead. |
Louis had been promised a scholarship !
in one of the royal artillery schools; de-
prived of his patron, he would probably !
lose the appointment.
Finally, the pecuniary affairs of |
Nine. de BuOnaparte were again en- |
tangled, and now appeared hopeless. |
She had for some time received a state |
bounty for planting mulberry trees, as |
France was introducing silk culture |
into the island. The inspectors had |
condemned the years work, and were |
withholding the allowance. Her letter
put an end for time to all study, his
torical or political. Napoleon imme-
diately applied, as his mother request
ed, for leave of absence, that he might
instantly set out to her relief His re-
quest was refused. He could 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 jour
nal for the ensuing weeks show how
he was, and contain, among
other things, long, wild, pessimistic
in which there is talk of
suicide. The plant is of the degen-
eracy among men, of the destruction OF
primitive simplicity in Corsica by the
French occupation, of his own isolation,
and of his yearning to see his friends
once more. Life is no longer worth
while; his country gone, patriot has
naught to live for, specially when he
has no pleasure and all is pain-when
the character of those about him is to
his own as moonlight to sunlight. If
there were but single life in his way.
he would bury the avenging blade of
his country and her violated laws in
the bosom of the tyrant. Some of his
was even less coherent
than this. 1t is absurd to take the |
morbid outpouring seriously, except in
so far as it goes to prove that its writer
was victim of the sentimental egoism
into which the psychological studies Of
the eighteenth century had degen-
Grated, and to suggest that possibly if
he had not been Napoleon he might
have been a Werther.