Paris was the storm centre, Napoleon was highly excited, and to Paris he was most eager to go. Urgently he wrote to his great-uncle, the archdeacon, to send him three hundred francs to pay his way to Paris. “There one can push to the forefront. I feel assured of success. Will you bar my road for the lack of a hundred crowns?” The archdeacon did not send the money. Napoleon also wrote for six crowns his mother owed him. The six crowns seem not to have been sent.
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This anecdote of Napoleon’s sojourn at Valence is preserved by the local gossips: Early one morning the surgeon of the regiment went to Napoleon’s room to speak to Louis. Napoleon had long since risen, and was reading. Louis was yet asleep. To arouse the lad, Napoleon took his sabre and knocked with the scabbard on the ceiling above. Louis soon came down, rubbing his eyes and complaining of having been waked in the midst of a beautiful dream—a dream in which Louis had figured as a king. “You a king!” said Napoleon; “I suppose I was an emperor then.”
The keenest pang Napoleon ever suffered from the ingratitude of those he had favored, was given him by this same Louis, for whom he had acted the devoted, self-denying father. Not only was Louis basely ungrateful in the days of the Napoleonic prosperity, but he pursued his brother with vindictive meanness when that brother lay dying at St. Helena, publishing a libel on him so late as 1820.
A traveller in Corsica (Gregorovius, 1852) writes: “We sat around a large table and regaled ourselves with an excellent supper.... A dim olive-oil lamp lit the Homeric wanderers’ meal. Many a bumper was drunk to the heroes of Corsica. We were of four nations,—Corsicans, French, Germans, and Lombards. I once mentioned the name of Louis Bonaparte, and asked a question. The company suddenly became silent, and the gay Frenchman looked ashamed.”
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In August, 1791, Napoleon obtained another furlough, and with about $80, which he had borrowed from the paymaster of his regiment, he and Louis set out for home. Again he left debts behind him, one of them being his board bill.
CHAPTER V
Soon after Napoleon reached home, the rich uncle, the archdeacon, died, and the Bonapartes got his money. The bulk of it was invested in the confiscated lands of the Church. Some of it was probably spent in Napoleon’s political enterprises.