Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1895-03-10

who bears thirteen children is heroine; but Madame de Buonaparte had now to go into the fields and plant mulberry trees for livingl Marbguf finally pre- vailed with the authorities to make Jo- seph Bonaparte also (we will now drop the Italian form Buonaparte) military pensiener. But the fathers death and Napoleon's protest countervailed the project, and Joseph was doomed to re- main cadet of the Church. For Julien, who developed passion for polite stud ies and wished to be a priest, scholar ship was obtained for the school at Bri- enne Such is the perversity of fate. As to Napoleon, it was agreed that instead of going into the navy, as Keralio had recommended and as Marbouf had wish cd, he should become instead lieuten- ant in the artillery After his gradua- tion, he should be assigned to the Regi- ment La Fere, stationed at Valence, on the left bank of the Rhone, three hun dred miles away as tho bird fiies-far to the south.
 The final examination at L Eeole Mill taire was passed. Like many other ill., cipient military heroes-our own in- cluded-Napoleon did not obtain q high rank in his classes. His papers gave him only the forty second place from the head. Louis Antoine Bourienne, his flu ture private secretary, had been far above him at Brienne Des Mazis, his favorite elassmate, was now graduated far below him at l. Ecole Militaire. But the grade was sufficient; and he was en- abled with his commission as lieutenant to choose the artillery as his arm of the service.
 For two months August to October, l785) the restraints of red tape held back Lieutenant Bonaparte from going to his place. His means gave utterly out. At last. late in the fall of 1785. he set out by conveyance from Paris as far as Lyons, but was then obliged, from sheer inability to pay his fare. to walk the re- mainder of the journey to Valence. There he arrived, and took his place in the Regiment La Fere-doubtless so called because it had no iron in itl
 Great was Napoleon's surprise at the character of the discipline. By the off cers and men almost everything was praoticed except those exercises which tended to make them soldiers They were gay. dissipated, frivolous. The pay was insufficient to support them i'll their career of pleasure and vice; but. they were nearly all scions of the nobility and knew not what it was to be limited in the means of qualification. Napo- Icons poverty and ambition alike held him back for moment from this man her of life; but, strange to say, he pres entity threw himself into the swim, and during the winter of 1785-86 he dissi- pated like the rest.
 Valence was small but important city. The young military officers were welcomed by ambitious families into their drawing rooms. For tho nonee, Bonaparte concluded that he must be- come accomplished l-that he must be social lion and quaf the bowl of pleas ure with his fellows. He had social pass ports from Marbouf's nephew, who was now the young Bishop of Autun.
 But to a nature such as Napoleon s pleasure, however torrid, could not long suffice. The lieutenant presently turned upon himself ill anger; and a sudden re- form was the immediate result. The thoughtful brow and sullen manner re- turned. He went back gloomily to his books; recovered his vantage, and hence- forth to the end of his life-though many time he heard the Sirens sing ing on nearby shores-he never post poned his ambitions for the delirious dreams and fieeting Authorizations of a dissipated life.
 During his career as student, Napo- Icons general reading had been in the nature of excursions along the coasts of political philosophy The French man. ner caught his imagination. He talked of liberty, of the virtues of the elder Romans, of humanity in state of na- ture-as revealed by Jean Jacques.
 Now, in the spring of 1786-recover- ing himself from the winters reyel-he turned from the "Contrat Sociale, :" which he had begun to distrust as Il ground of political life. to the "Histoire Philosophique" of the Abbe Raynal Here he lost himself in the mysteries land mistsl of that science which is said to teach by example.
 The writings of the Abbe Raynal, from being conglomerate in which several strong hands-notably that of Diderot-had great part, were now in the ascendant The French mind caught them, embraced them, and adored. They were thought for the time to be the be- all and the end-all of political philoso- phy. Behold Napoleon, whose mind had already been we'll stocked with the fas- cinating but unprofitable stories of He rodotus, Diodorus, Strabo Plutarch, Xenophon, ct i'd omne genus,-behold him at his candle-lighted, deal board ta. ble in the barracks of Valence rising in thought somewhat from the particulars of human story to the general laws of conduct Be it remembered, however. that at that epoch the human mind had not yet gained the first glimpse of that universal coherence and consistency of all things which constitutes tho bo+to,,,