the Byzantine Emperors; one
genealogical explorer has tracked the family to Majorca, and, altering
its name to Bonpart, has discovered its progenitor in the Man of the
Iron Mask; while the Duchesse d'Abrantes, voyaging eastwards in quest
of its ancestors, has confidently claimed for the family a Greek
origin. Painstaking research has dispelled these romancings of
historical _trouveurs_, and has connected this enigmatic stock with a
Florentine named "William, who in the year 1261 took the surname of
_Bonaparte_ or _Buonaparte_. The name seems to have been assumed when,
amidst the unceasing strifes between Guelfs and Ghibellines that rent
the civic life of Florence, William's party, the Ghibellines, for a
brief space gained the ascendancy. But perpetuity was not to be found
in Florentine politics; and in a short time he was a fugitive at a
Tuscan village, Sarzana, beyond the reach of the victorious Guelfs.
Here the family seems to have lived for wellnigh three centuries,
maintaining its Ghibelline and aristocratic principles with surprising
tenacity. The age was not remarkable for the virtue of constancy, or
any other virtue. Politics and private life were alike demoralized by
unceasing intrigues; and amidst strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies
and republics, cities and autocrats, there was formed that type of
Italian character which is delineated in the pages of Macchiavelli.
From the depths of debasement of that cynical age the Buonapartes
were saved by their poverty, and by the isolation of their life at
Sarzana. Yet the embassies discharged at intervals by the more
talented members of the family showed that the gifts for intrigue were
only dormant; and they were certainly transmitted in their intensity
to the greatest scion of the race.

In the year 1529 Francis Buonaparte, whether pressed by poverty or
distracted by despair at the misfortunes which then overwhelmed Italy,
migrated to Corsica. There the family was grafted upon a tougher
branch of the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics developed
under the shadow of the Medici there were now added qualities of a
more virile stamp. Though dominated in turn by the masters of the
Mediterranean, by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, by the men of Pisa,
and finally by the Genoese Republic, the islanders retained a striking
individuality. The rock-bound coast and mountainous interior helped to
preserve the essential features of primitive life. Foreign Powers
might aff