"Why so sad, Joseph?" he inquired. "Are you sorry I have returned?""No, dear Napoleon," said Joseph, turning away his head to hide his tears, "it is not that. I was only weeping because--because, in the nature of things, you will have to go away again, and--the--the idea of parting from you has for the moment upset my equilibrium.""Then we must proceed to restore it," said Napoleon, and, taking Joseph by the right arm, he twisted it until Joseph said that he felt quite recovered.
Napoleon's stay at Corsica was quite uneventful. Fearing lest by giving way to love of family, and sitting and talking with them in the luxuriously appointed parlor below-stairs, he should imbibe too strong a love for comfort and ease, and thus weaken his soldierly instincts, as well as break in upon that taciturnity which, as we have seen, was the keynote of his character, he had set apart for himself a small room on the attic floor, where he spent most of his time undisturbed, and at the same time made Joseph somewhat easier in his mind.
"When he's up-stairs I am comparatively safe," said Joseph. "If he stayed below with us I fear I should have a return of my nervous prostration."Meantime, Napoleon was promoted to a first lieutenancy, and shortly after, during the Reign of Terror in Paris, having once more for the moment yielded to an impulse to speak out in meeting, he denounced anarchy in unmeasured terms, and was arrested and taken to Paris.
"It was a fortunate arrest for me," he said. "There I was in Corsica with barely enough money to pay my way back to the capital.
Arrested, the State had to pay my fare, and I got back to active political scenes on a free pass. As for the trial, it was a farce, and I was triumphantly acquitted. The jury was out only fifteen minutes. I had so little to say for myself that the judges began to doubt if I had any ideas on any subject--or, as one of them said, having no head to mention, it would be useless to try and cut it off.
Hence my acquittal and my feeling that taciturnity is the mother of safety."Then came the terrible attack of the mob upon the Tuileries on the 20th of June, 1792. Napoleon was walking in the street with Bourrienne when the attack began.
"There's nothing like a lamp-post for an occasion like this, it broadens one's views so," he said, rapidly climbing up a convenient post, from which he could see all that went on. "I didn't know that this was the royal family's reception-day. Do you want to know what I think?""Mumm is the word," whispered Bourrienne. "This is no time to have opinions.""Mumm may be the word, but water is the beverage. Mumm is too dry.
What this crowd needs is a good wetting down," retorted Bonaparte.
"If I were Louis XVI. I'd turn the hose on these tramps, and keep them at bay until I could get my little brass cannon loaded. When Ihad that loaded, I'd let them have a few balls hot from the bat.
This is what comes of being a born king. Louis doesn't know how to talk to the people. He's all right for a state-dinner, but when it comes to a mass-meeting he is not in it."And then as the King, to gratify the mob, put the red cap of Jacobinism upon his head, the man who was destined before many years to occupy the throne of France let fall an ejaculation of wrath.
"The wretches!" he cried. "How little they know! They've only given him another hat to talk through! They'll have to do their work all over again, unless Louis takes my advice and travels abroad for his health."These words were prophetic, for barely two months later the second and most terrible and portentous attack upon the palace took place--an attack which Napoleon witnessed, as he had witnessed the first, from a convenient lamp-post, and which filled him with disgust and shame; and it was upon that night of riot and bloodshed that he gave utterance to one of his most famous sayings.
"Bourrienne," said he, as with his faithful companions he laboriously climbed the five flights of stairs leading to his humble apartment, "I hate the aristocrats, as you know; and to-day has made me hate the populace as well. What is there left to like?""Alas! lieutenant, I cannot say," said Bourrienne, shaking his head sadly.
"What," continued Napoleon, "is the good of anything?""I give it up," returned Bourrienne, with a sigh. "I never was good at riddles. What IS the good of anything?""Nothing!" said Napoleon, laconically, as he took off his uniform and went to bed.