the Gregorian
Calendar. Hence that year ended on Sept. 22, and An IX and succeeding
years began on Sept. 23. Consequently in the above table of months the
numbers of all days from Vendemiaire 1, An IX (Sept. 23, 1800), to
Nivose 10, An XIV (Dec. 31, 1805), inclusive, will have to be
_increased by one_, except only in the next leap year between Ventose
9, An XII, and Vendemiaire 1, An XIII (Feb. 28-Sept, 23, 1804), when
the two Revolutionary aberrations happen to neutralize each other.

* * * * *

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

CHAPTER I

PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS

"I was born when my country was perishing. Thirty thousand French
vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of Liberty in waves of
blood, such was the sight which struck my eyes." This passionate
utterance, penned by Napoleon Buonaparte at the beginning of the
French Revolution, describes the state of Corsica in his natal year.
The words are instinct with the vehemence of the youth and the
extravagant sentiment of the age: they strike the keynote of his
career. His life was one of strain and stress from his cradle to his
grave.

In his temperament as in the circumstances of his time the young
Buonaparte was destined for an extraordinary career. Into a tottering
civilization he burst with all the masterful force of an Alaric. But
he was an Alaric of the south, uniting the untamed strength of his
island kindred with the mental powers of his Italian ancestry. In his
personality there is a complex blending of force and grace, of animal
passion and mental clearness, of northern common sense with the
promptings of an oriental imagination; and this union in his nature of
seeming opposites explains many of the mysteries of his life.
Fortunately for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed,
even by the most adroit historical philosophizer or the most exacting
champion of heredity. But in so far as the sources of Napoleon's power
can be measured, they may be traced to the unexampled needs of mankind
in the revolutionary epoch and to his own exceptional endowments.
Evidently, then, the characteristics of his family claim some
attention from all who would understand the man and the influence
which he was to wield over modern Europe.

It has been the fortune of his House to be the subject of dispute from
first to last. Some writers have endeavoured to trace its descent back
to the Caesars of Rome, others to