The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1895-08-04
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OF anything else that seemed to need it,
Why does great man flatter himself
that he can go away for 10 or IL years
seeing the country and leaving his wife
at home to look out ut the window day
after day in II hotel watching the bus
go down to meet No. / | or to take pas
sengers to No. 10, yet expect to find
her on his return younger and more
beautiful, more devoted and more will
ing to occupy the same room IL years
moro watching the bus us it goes to meet
No. / or to take passengers to No. 10.
going west?
The biographer has little space to iii.
gress here, but had Napoleon taken Jose
phine with him whenever he went into
battle it would nave been great kind
ness not only to her, but to the historian.
1t Napoleon and Josephine had fought
more against the common enemy, they
would have been on better peace foot
ing themselves.
Suffice it to say here that in after
years they were separated, childless, and
Josephine, who, by her intrigues, what
ever those may DO, had made Napoleon
commander, was denied the solemn
joy of sharing his glory and his hurnili-
elton.
Napoleon was called LIE Petit Caporal
and was honored 100 years later by hay
ing cigarette named after him, but too
late to swell his proud, cold bosom in
the i'll ventilated sarcophagus which
holds all that is mortal Of the first en-
peror.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to the trachca WOO tho flceting breath?
Or joyous pnans stir the moldcring dust
Or soothe the dull, cold ear of deathP
No, indeed l should certainly say not.
The marriage of Napoleon was fol-
lowed by ono of the most brilliant cam
paigns i'll history. Eleven days after his
wedding he went to complete his honey
moon amid the rocks of the frozen
Maritime Alps with his frost bitten,
starving army.
Maritime indeed |" methinks hear
Josephine remarking, with cynical
look at her marriage certificate, and also
at bright new silver butter dish given
her by the nobility of France. "What an
attractive bride I must be, with ono
husband passed on to spirit life and the
other eating his frozen victuals 1000
feet above timber linep'
From these lofty heights the Little
Corporal, wearing u large pair of ear
NUTS, descended upon a first, second,
third and fourth Austrian army, only TO
drive them before him into corner and
wipe them out at his leisure. Peace fol-
lowed-the peace Of Campo Formio-
and Lombardy and the Netherlands
were coded to Franco.
Space will not permit of detail here
regarding the great battles of Napoleon,
but we may say that with these victories
the powers at home saw at once that he
was no longer their servant, but tho
peoples idol, and that one day he would
not only WELD the baton for France to
fiddle, but that Europe and tho civilized
world must soon mark down their Sc
curities when Napoleon said so.
He proposed TO conquer Egypt and
capture the pyramids He had tho idea
that they would look we'll in tho front
yard of Versailles. He lived in the sad
die and shifted In every breeze the
warm blood of his foe.
Such life would bore me to death,
but just SEQ how different Napoleon was!
He kept OF fighting Christian or Mos
lem, Jew or gentle, until tho thirsty
yet blood clottcd jaws Of insatiate war
were paralyZcd, and with yet hungry
and staring eyes and lolling tongue the
cruel beast that had peopled continent
with widows and orphans, sowed the
valleys thick with graves and filed the
snowy canyons OF the Alps with un-
known dead paused at the evening Of
great disaster and found itself deserted.
Yet Napoleon was feared even after
he was dead, and the English piled tons
upon tons of granite over his poor clay
and bound these giant blocks of stone
together with bands of iron, so that
many years aftcrward the work of ex-
humation was almost impossible
But why is it that with all the glory
that surrounds the name of Napoleon
every human heart beats more in SYM
pathy with his wronged and wrong but
discarded wife and human interest
turns from the history Of Marengo and
of Austerlitz to read tho story of one
poor, ambitious, broken heart that beat
and bled for him?
1t is not the first case wherein do
voted wife has kindled in her husbands
breast tho fire Of ambition only at last
to be consumed by it and cast to the
four winds of heaven by his hand.
Had Napoleon fought with the Mos
lem foe summers and spent his winters
i'll Paris with his wife the war would
have lasted longer and his domestic his-