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Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica

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"Humph!" retorted Fouche. "I don't see how that would have helped matters any. All the history in creation could not have won the battle of Waterloo for you." "Fool that you are!" cried Napoleon, desperately, rising. "Can't you see? Anybody who knows anything about the history of France knows that the battle of Waterloo resulted fatally for me. Had I known that, do you suppose I'd have gone there? Not I! I'd have gone fishing in the South of France instead, and this would not have happened. Leave me! I wish to be alone." Left to his own reflections Bonaparte paced his room for hours. Then, tapping his bell, he summoned one of his faithful adherents. "Monsieur le B-," he said, as the attendant entered, "you have heard the news?" "Yes, Sire," sobbed Le B-. "Do I not carry myself well in the hour of defeat?" "You do, Your Majesty." "Am I pale, Le B-?" "No--no--oh, no, not at all, Sire." "Tell me the truth, Le B-. We must not let the enemy find us broken when they arrive. How do I look? Out with it." "Out of sight, Sire!" replied Le B-, bending backward as far as he could, and gazing directly at the ceiling. "Then bring on your invader, and let us hear the worst," ordered Napoleon, encouraged by Le B-'s assurances. A few days later, Bonaparte, having nothing else to do, once more abdicated, and threw himself upon the generosity of the English people. "I was only fooling, anyhow," he said, with a sad smile. "If you hadn't sent me to Elba I wouldn't have come back. As for the fighting, you all said I was outside of the pale of civilization, and I had to fight. I didn't care much about getting back into the pail, but I really objected to having it said that I was in the tureen." This jest completely won the hearts of the English who were used to just such humor, who loved it, and who, many years later, showed that love by the establishment of a comic journal as an asylum for bon- mots similarly afflicted. The result was, not death, but a new Empire, the Island of St. Helena. "This," said Wellington, "will serve to make his jokes more far- fetched than ever; so that by sending him there we shall not only be gracious to a fallen foe, but add to the gayety of our nation." CHAPTER XII: 1815-1821-1895 It is with St. Helena that all biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte hitherto published have ended, and perhaps it is just as well that these entertaining works, prepared by purely finite minds, should end there. It is well for an historian not to tell more than he knows, a principle which has guided our pen from the inception of this work to this point, and which must continue to the bitter end. We shall be relentless and truthful to the last, even though in so doing we are compelled to overthrow all historical precedent. Bonaparte arrived at St. Helena in October, 1815. He had embarked, every one supposed, with the impression that he was going to America, and those about him, fearing a passionate outbreak when he learned the truth, tried for a time to convince him that he had taken the wrong steamer; then when they found that he could not be deceived in this way, they made allusions to the steering-gear having got out of order, but the ex-Emperor merely smiled. "You cannot fool me," he said. "I know whither I am drifting. I went to a clairvoyant before leaving Paris, who cast a few dozen horoscopes for me and they all ended at St. Helena. It is inevitable. I must go there, and all these fairy tales about wrong steamers and broken rudders and so on are useless. I submit. I could return if I wished, but I do not wish to return. By a mere speech to these sailors I could place myself in command of this ship to-day, turn her about and proclaim myself Emperor of the Seas; but I don't want to. I prefer dry land and peace to a coup de tar and the throne of Neptune." All of which shows that the great warrior was weary. Then followed a dreary exile of uneventful years, in which the ex- Emperor conducted paper campaigns of great fierceness against the English government, which with unprecedented parsimony allowed him no more than $60,000 a year and house rent. "The idea of limiting me to five thousand dollars a month," he remarked, savagely, to Sir Hudson Lowe. "It's positively low." "It strikes me as positively high," retorted the governor. "You know well enough that you couldn't spend ten dollars a week in this place if you put your whole mind on it, if you hadn't insisted on having French waiters in your dining-room, whom you have to tip every time they bring you anything." "Humph!" said Bonaparte. "That isn't any argument. I'm a man used to handling large sums. It isn't that I want to spend money; it's that I want to have it about me in case of emergency. However, I know well enough why they keep my allowance down to $60,000." "Why is it?" asked Sir Hudson. "They know that you can't be bought for $60,000, but they wouldn't dare make it $60,000 and one cent," retorted the captive. "Put that in your cigarette and smoke it, Sir Harlem, and hereafter call me Emperor. That's my name, Emperor N. Bonaparte." "And I beg that you will not call me Sir Harlem," returned the governor, irritated by the Emperor's manner. "My name is Hudson, not Harlem." "Pray excuse the slip," said the Emperor, scornfully. "I knew you were named after some American river, I didn't know which. However, I imagined that the Harlem was nearer your size than the Hudson, since the latter has some pretensions to grandeur. Now please flow down to the sea and lose yourself, I'm getting sleepy again." So, in constant conflict with Sir Hudson, who refused to call him by his title, and whom in consequence he refused to call by his proper name, answering such epithets as "Corporal" and "Major" with a savagely-spoken "Delaware" or an ironically respectful "Mohawk," Bonaparte dwelt at St. Helena until the 5th of May, 1821, when, historians tell us, he died. This is an error, for upon that date Bonaparte escaped. He had fought death too many times to succumb to him now, and, while the writers of history have in a sense stated the truth when they say that he passed away in the night, their readers have gained a false impression. It is the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte, like Dante and Virgil, passed over the dark river Styx as

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