mly
though he had espoused the principles of the Revolution, his patrician
blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar outrages, and he exclaimed:
"Why don't they sweep off four or five hundred of that _canaille_ with
cannon? The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is
significant. If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his instincts
were always with monarchy. His career was to reconcile his reason with
his instincts, and to impose on weary France the curious compromise of
a revolutionary Imperialism.

On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the Tuileries, he
looked down on the strange events which dealt the _coup de grace_ to
the dying monarchy. Again the chieftain within him sided against the
vulture rabble and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops
to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buonaparte to his
brother Joseph) "had mounted his horse, the victory would have been
his--so I judge from the spirit which prevailed in the morning."
When all was over, when Louis sheathed his sword and went for
shelter to the National Assembly, when the fierce Marseillais were
slaughtering the Swiss Guards and bodyguards of the king, Buonaparte
dashed forward to save one of these unfortunates from a southern
sabre. "Southern comrade, let us save this poor wretch.--Are you
of the south?--Yes.--Well, we will save him."

Altogether, what a time of disillusionment this was to the young
officer. What depths of cruelty and obscenity it revealed in the
Parisian rabble. What folly to treat them with the Christian
forbearance shown by Louis XVI. How much more suitable was grapeshot
than the beatitudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a
somewhat similar crisis on this very spot.

During the few days when victorious Paris left Louis with the sham
title of king, Buonaparte received his captain's commission, which was
signed for the king by Servan, the War Minister. Thus did the
revolutionary Government pass over his double breach of military
discipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, "La carriere ouverte
aux talents," was never more conspicuously illustrated than in the
facile condoning of his offences and in this rapid promotion. It was
indeed a time fraught with vast possibilities for all republican or
Jacobinical officers. Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over
the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian invaders. But National
Guards were enrolling by tens of thousands t