the spirit of the Corsicans and of sapping the base of
the French monarchy.

But these reams of manuscript notes and crude literary efforts have an
even wider source of interest. They show how narrow was his outlook on
life. It all turned on the regeneration of Corsica by methods which he
himself prescribed. We are therefore able to understand why, when his
own methods of salvation for Corsica were rejected, he tore himself
away and threw his undivided energies into the Revolution.

Yet the records of his early life show that in his character there was
a strain of true sentiment and affection. In him Nature carved out a
character of rock-like firmness, but she adorned it with flowers of
human sympathy and tendrils of family love. At his first parting from
his brother Joseph at Autun, when the elder brother was weeping
passionately, the little Napoleon dropped a tear: but that, said the
tutor, meant as much as the flood of tears from Joseph. Love of his
relatives was a potent factor of his policy in later life; and slander
has never been able wholly to blacken the character of a man who loved
and honoured his mother, who asserted that her advice had often been
of the highest service to him, and that her justice and firmness of
spirit marked her out as a natural ruler of men. But when these
admissions are freely granted, it still remains true that his
character was naturally hard; that his sense of personal superiority
made him, even as a child, exacting and domineering; and the sequel
was to show that even the strongest passion of his youth, his
determination to free Corsica from France, could be abjured if
occasion demanded, all the force of his nature being thenceforth
concentrated on vaster adventures.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA

"They seek to destroy the Revolution by attacking my person: I will
defend it, for I am the Revolution." Such were the words uttered by
Buonaparte after the failure of the royalist plot of 1804. They are a
daring transcript of Louis XIV.'s "L'etat, c'est moi." That was a bold
claim, even for an age attuned to the whims of autocrats: but this of
the young Corsican is even more daring, for he thereby equated himself
with a movement which claimed to be wide as humanity and infinite as
truth. And yet when he spoke these words, they were not scouted as
presumptuous folly: to most Frenchmen they seemed sober truth and
practic