The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1895-03-23

NApolEoN,s pEspoNDENcY.
BAD News from His Home Mado Kim
TnIls of Suiciuc.

J4u NCW9 from Ills Homo MadO kim
Talk of Suicide.
Tho agreeable and studious life ut
Nalencc sns soou ended, writes Prof.
Sloane in Century. Early in August,
1887, little rebellion, known as the
''Two-cent Revolt" broke out in Lyons
over al atteIapt to reasscrt an ancient
foudal right concerning the sale of wine
which had Tong been i'll allegiance. Tho
neighborinG garrisons were ordered to
furnish their respective quotas for its
suppression. Bonapartc's company was
sent among others, but the disturbance
was already qucllcd when he arrived,
and the month he spent at Lyons was
so agreeable that, as lie wrote his uncle
Fcsch, he left the city with regret ''to
follow his destiny" His regiment had
been ordered northward to Douay i'll
Flanders, and there he rejoincd it about
the middle of October.
The short time he spent under the in
clement skies of that frontier fortress
was drcary one. Dad news came from
home. Joseph had some time before
turned his eyes towards Tuscany for II
possible career. In order to test his
chances of success at court, he had
made application for an empty dccora-
ton. The answer to his request had
been gracious permission to prove his
Tuscan nationality, which was, of
course, equivalent to rcpulse. Utterly
without success i'll finding occupation
in Corsica, an dhopcless as to France, he
was now about to make final dcspcr~
ate effort, and. decorated or not, to go
in person to Florence and to seek en-
ploymcnt of any kind which offered.
Lucicn, the archdcacon, was seriously
i'll, and Gen. Marbeuf, the last influcn-
tial friend of the family, was dead.
Louis had been promised scholarship
in one of the royal artillery schools; de-
privcd of his patron, he would probably
lose the appointment.
Finally, the pecuniary affairs of
Mime. dc 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 im1ne-
diatcly 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.
Desponlcnt and anxious, he moped,
grew miscra bic, and contracted 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
dispirited he was, and contain, among
other things, long, wild, pcssimistic
rhapsody, 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, a patriot has
nnught to 1.-Two 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 n single life in his way,
he would bury the avcnging blade of
his country and her violated laws in
the bosom of the tyrant Some of his
complaining 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 a victim of the sentimental cgoism
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 Wcrther.