LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

thing. 'Is that all?' said he, unbuttoning his coarse waistcoat, and detaching a belt which he placed in my hands. 'Here are six thousand dollars in gold, which I can spare without any inconvenience. Take them and relieve your mother.' I can not to this day explain to myself how I could have been willing to receive the money, but I seized the gold as by a convulsive movement, and, almost frantic with excitement, ran to send it to my distressed mother. It was not until the money had left my hands and was on its way to Marseilles that I reflected upon what I had done. I hastened back to the spot where I had left Démasis, but he was no longer there. For several days continuously, I went out in the morning and returned not till evening, searching every place in Paris where I could hope to find him. All the researches I then made, as well as those I made after my accession to power, were in vain. It was not till the Empire was approaching its fall that I again discovered Démasis. It was now my turn to question him, and to ask him what he had thought of my strange conduct, and why I had never heard even his name for fifteen years. He replied that as he had been in no need of money he had not asked me to repay the loan, although he was well assured that I should find no difficulty in reimbursing him. But he feared that if he made himself known, that I should force him to quit the retirement in which he lived happily, occupying himself with horticulture. I had very great difficulty in making him accept sixty thousand dollars as an imperial reimbursement for the six thousand lent to his comrade in distress. I also made him accept the office of director-general of the crown gardens, with a salary of six thousand dollars a year, and the honors of an officer of the household. I also provided a good situation for his brother.

      "Two of my comrades in the military school, and the two to whom I was most closely united by the sympathies of early friendship, had, by one of those mysteries of Providence which we often witness, an immense influence upon my destiny. Démasis arrested me at the moment when I was about to commit suicide; and Philippeau prevented my conquest of St. Jean d'Acre. Had it not been for him I should have been master of this key of the East. I should have marched upon Constantinople, and have established an empire in Asia."

      But reverses began now to attend the army in Italy. Defeat followed defeat. They were driven by the Austrians from the posts to which Napoleon had conducted them, and were retreating before their foes. The Committee of Public Safety were in great trepidation. In their ignorance they knew not what orders to issue. Some one who had heard of Napoleon's achievements among the Alps suggested his name. He was called into the meetings of the committee for advice. The local and technical information he had acquired, his military science, and the vast resources of his highly cultivated mind, placed him immediately at the head of the committee. Though young in years, and still more youthful in appearance, his gravity, his serious and pensive thoughtfulness, gave oracular weight to his counsels, and his plans were unhesitatingly adopted. He had studied the topography of the Maritime Alps with the most enthusiastic assiduity, and was familiar with the windings and characteristics of every stream, and the course of mountain ranges, and with the military capabilities of the ravines and glens. The judicious dispositions which he proposed of the various divisions of the army arrested the tide of Austrian conquest, and enabled the French, though much inferior in number to their allied foes, to defend the positions they had been directed to occupy. During all this time, however, while Napoleon, in the committee-room in Paris, was guiding the movements of the army in Italy, he was studying in the public libraries, during every leisure moment, with an assiduity so intense and inexhaustible that it could not have been surpassed had he been inspired with the highest ambition for literary and scientific honors.

      In his occasional evening saunterings along the boulevards, as he saw the effeminate young men of that metropolis, rolling in luxury, and, in affected speech, criticising the tones of an opera singer, or the exquisite moulding of a dancer's limbs, he could not refrain from giving utterance to his contempt. When he was thus one evening treading the dusty thoroughfares and looking upon such a spectacle, he impatiently exclaimed, "Can it be, that upon such creatures fortune is willing to lavish her favors! How contemptible is human nature." Though Napoleon secluded himself entirely from haunts of revelry and scenes of dissipation, and from all those dissolute courses into which the young men of those days so recklessly plunged, he adopted this course, not apparently from any conscientious desire to do that which was right in the sight of God, but from what has been called "the expulsive power of new affection." Ambition seemed to expel from his mind every other passion. The craving to obtain renown by the performance of great and glorious deeds; the desire to immortalize his name, as one of the distinguished men and illustrious benefactors of the human race, had infused itself so intensely throughout his whole nature, that animal passion even was repressed, and all the ordinary pursuits of worldly pleasure became in his view frivolous and contemptible. His ambition needed but the spirit of religion to sanctify it, to make it as noble an ambition as ever glowed in a human bosom. But alas! it all centred in himself. He wished to benefit the human race, not because he loved his fellow man, but that he might immortalize his own name.

      At this time it can hardly be said that there was any religion in France. Christianity had been all but universally discarded. The priests had been banished; the churches demolished or converted into temples of science or haunts of merriment; the immortality of the soul was denied, and upon the gateways of the grave-yards there was inscribed, "Death is an eternal sleep." Napoleon was consequently deprived of all the influences of religion in the formation of his character. And yet his mind was naturally, if it be proper so to speak, a devotional mind. His temperament was serious, thoughtful, and pensive. The grand and the mysterious engrossed and overawed him. Even his ambition was not exulting and exhilarating, but sombre, majestic, and sublime. He thought of Herculean toil and sleepless labor, and heroic deeds. For ease, and luxury, and self-indulgence, he had no desire, but he wished to be the greatest of men by accomplishing more than any other mortal had ever accomplished. Even in youth life had but few charms for him, and he took a melancholy view of man's earthly pilgrimage, after asserting that existence was not a blessing. And when drawing near to the close of life he asserted that he had known but few happy moments upon earth, and that for those few he was indebted to the love of Josephine.

      The National Convention now prepared another constitution for the adoption of the people of France. The executive power, instead of being placed in the hands of one king, or president, was intrusted to five chiefs, who were to be called Directors. The legislative powers were committed to two bodies, as in the United States. The first, corresponding to the United States Senate, was to be called the Council of Ancients. It was to consist of two hundred and fifty members, each of whom was to be at least forty years of age, and a married man or a widower. An unmarried man was not considered worthy of a post of such responsibility in the service of the state. The second body was called the Council of Five Hundred, from the number of members of which it was to be composed. It corresponded with our House of Representatives, and each of its members was to be at least thirty years of age.

      This constitution was far superior to any other which had yet been formed. It was framed by the moderate republicans, who wished to establish a republican government, protecting France on the one hand from the royalists, who would reestablish the Bourbons upon the throne, and on the other hand from the misrule of the violent Jacobins, who wished to perpetuate the reign of terror. This constitution was sent down to the primary assemblies of the people, for their adoption or rejection. It was accepted promptly in nearly all the rural districts, and was adopted by acclamation in the army.

      The city of Paris was divided into ninety-six sections, or wards, in each of which, as in our cities, the inhabitants of that particular ward assembled at the polls. When the constitution was tendered to these several sections of Paris, forty-eight of them voted in its favor, while forty-six rejected it. The royalists and the Jacobins, the two extremes, united in the opposition, each party hoping that by the overthrow of the Convention their own views might obtain the precedence. The Convention declared that the majority of the nation had every where pronounced in favor of the new constitution, and they prepared to carry its provisions into effect. The opposing sections, now thoroughly aroused, began to arm, resolved upon violent resistance. The Parisian mob, ever ready for an outbreak, joined most heartily with their more aristocratic leaders, and all Paris seemed to be rousing to attack the Convention. The National Guard, a body of soldiers corresponding with the American militia, though far better officered, equipped, and drilled, joined promptly the insurgents. The insurrection-gun was fired, the tocsin tolled,

Скачать книгу