is, at least, no less advanced
than the Italian province of Sardinia. The final amalgamation of
Paoli's country with France, which was in a measure the result of his
leaning toward a French protectorate, accomplished one end, however,
which has rendered it impossible to separate her from the course of
great events, from the number of the mighty agents in history.
Curiously longing in his exile for a second Sampiero to have wielded
the physical power while he himself should have become a Lycurgus,
Paoli's wish was to be half-way fulfilled in that a warrior greater
than Sampiero was about to be born in Corsica, one who should, by the
very union so long resisted, come, as the master of France, to wield a
power strong enough to shatter both tyrannies and dynasties, thus
clearing the ground for a lawgiving closely related to Paoli's own
just and wise conceptions of legislation.

The coming man was to be a typical Corsican, moreover. Born in the
agony of his fatherland, he was to combine all the important qualities
of his folk in himself. Like them, he was to be short, with wonderful
eyes and beautiful teeth; temperate; quietly, even meanly, clad;
generous, grateful for any favor, however small; masterful,
courageous, impassive, shrewd, resolute, fluent of speech; profoundly
religious, even superstitious; hot-tempered, inscrutable, mendacious,
revengeful sometimes and ofttimes forgiving, disdainful of woman and
her charms; above all, boastful, conceited, and with a passion for
glory. His pride and his imagination were to be barbaric in their
immensity, his clannishness was to be that of the most primitive
civilization. In all these points he was to be Corsican; other
characteristics he was to acquire from the land of his adoption
through an education French both in affairs and in books; but he was
after all Corsican from the womb to the grave; that in the first
degree, and only secondarily French, while his cosmopolitan disguise
was to be scarcely more than a mask to be raised or lowered at
pleasure.

This scion was to come from the stock which at first bore the name of
Bonaparte, or, as the heraldic etymology later spelled it, Buonaparte.
There were branches of the same stock, or, at least, of the same name,
in other parts of Italy. Three towns at least claimed to be the seat
of a family with this patronymic: and one of them, Treviso, possessed
papers to prove the claim. Although other members of his family based
absurd