And yet one more, from another equally veracious ‘life.’ ‘Buonaparte’s great-grandfather kept a wine-house for factors (like our gin shops), and, being convicted of murder and robbery, he died a galley slave at Genoa, in 1724: his wife was likewise an accomplice, and she died in the House of Correction at Genoa in 1734. His grandfather was a butcher of Ajaccio, and his grandmother daughter of a journeyman tanner at Bastia. His father was a low petty-fogging lawyer, who served and betrayed his country by turns, during the Civil Wars. After France conquered Corsica, he was a spy to the French Government, and his mother their trull. What is bred in the bone will not come out of the flesh.’
CHAPTER II.
DESCENT FROM THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK—ANAGRAMS, ETC., ON HIS NAME—THE BEAST OF THE APOCALYPSE—HIS MOTHER’S ACCOUNT OF HIS BIRTH.
The foregoing was the sort of stuff given to our grandfathers for history; nothing could be bad enough for Boney, the Corsican Ogre—nay, they even tortured his name to suit political purposes. It was hinted that the keeper of ‘the Man with the Iron Mask,’ who was said to be no other than the twin (and elder) brother of Louis XIV., was named Bon part; that the said keeper had a daughter, with whom the Man in the Mask fell in love, and to whom he was privately married; that their children received their mother’s name, and were secretly conveyed to Corsica, where the name was converted into Bonaparte, or Buonaparte; and that one of these children was the ancestor of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was thus entitled to be recognised, not only as of French origin, but as the direct descendant of the rightful heir to the throne of France.
They put his name into Greek, and tortured it thus:—
Napoleon, Apoleon, Poleon, Oleon, Leon, Eon, On,
Ναπολεων, Απολεων, Πολεων, Ολεων, Λεων, Εων, Ων,
which sentence will translate, ‘Napoleon, being the lion of the nations, went about destroying cities.’
In the ‘Journal des Débats,’ 8 Avril, 1814, although not an English satire on his name, it is gravely stated that he was baptised by the name of Nicholas, and that he assumed the name of Napoleon as an uncommon one; but this name, Nicholas, which was applied to him so freely in France, was but a cant term for a stupid blockhead. Whilst on this subject, however, I cannot refrain from quoting a passage from a French book: ‘I do not know what fellow has held that Napolione was a demon, who in bygone times, amused himself by tormenting a poor imbecile. The fellow can not have read the life of the Saints: he would then have learned that St. Napolione, whose name is given at length in the legend, is as good a patron as any other; that he performed seven miracles during his life, and twenty-two and a half after his death—for he had not time to finish the twenty-third; it was an unfortunate tiler who, in falling from a roof, broke both his legs. St. Napoleon had already set one, when an unlucky doctor prescribed some medicine to the sick man which carried him off to the other world.’[9]