continues: "What is
Alexander doing when he rushes from Thebes into Persia and thence into
India? He is ever restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself
God. What is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is he not
tormented by all the daggers of the furies?"--The words ring false,
even for this period of Buonaparte's life; and one can readily
understand his keen wish in later years to burn every copy of these
youthful essays. But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe
against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may
wing her shaft at the towering flight of the imperial eagle.[15]

At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to another
regiment which happened to be quartered at Valence; but his second
sojourn there is remarkable only for signs of increasing devotion to
the revolutionary cause. In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica
on furlough, and remains there until the month of May following. He
finds the island rent by strifes which it would be tedious to
describe. Suffice it to say that the breach between Paoli and the
Buonapartes gradually widened owing to the dictator's suspicion of all
who favoured the French Revolution. The young officer certainly did
nothing to close the breach. Determined to secure his own election as
lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National Guard, he spent much
time in gaining recruits who would vote for him. He further assured
his success by having one of the commissioners, who was acting in
Paoli's interest, carried off from his friends and detained at the
Buonapartes' house in Ajaccio--his first _coup_[16] Stranger events
were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited by the
persecuting edicts against the clergy and the closing of a monastery,
there was sharp fighting between the populace and Buonaparte's
companies of National Guards. Originating in a petty quarrel, which
was taken up by eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town
and gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrowing his
enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where
he tried to seduce the French regiment from its duty to officers
whom he dubbed aristocrats. The attempt was a failure. The whole
truth can, perhaps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of
lies which speedily enveloped the affair; but there can be no
doubt that on the second day of strife Buonaparte's National
Guards began the fight and subsequently