Chapter 1

In 1784, Bonaparte, then fifteen years old, arrived at the Military School of Paris from Brienne, being one among four under the escort of a minim priest. He mounted one hundred and seventy-three steps, carrying his small trunk, and reached, below the roof, the barrack chamber he was to inhabit. This chamber had two beds, and a small window opening on the great yard of the school. The wall was whitewashed; the youthful predecessors of Bonaparte had scrawled upon this with charcoal, and the new-comer read in this little cell these four inscriptions that we ourselves read thirty-five years ago:—

It takes rather long to win an epaulet.—De Montgivray.

The finest day in life is that of a battle.—Vicomte de Tinténiac.

Life is but a long falsehood.—Le Chevalier Adolphe Delmas.

All ends under six feet of earth.-Le Comte de la Villette.

By substituting for “an epaulet” “an empire,”—a very slight change, —the above four inscriptions were all the destiny of Bonaparte, and a kind of “Mene Tekel Upharsin” written beforehand upon that wall. Desmazis, junior, who accompanied Bonaparte, being his room-mate, and about to occupy one of the two beds, saw him take a pencil (it is Desmazis who has related the fact) and draw beneath the inscriptions that he had just read a rough sketch of his house at Ajaccio; then, by the side of that house, without suspecting that he was thus bringing near the island of Corsica another mysterious island then hid in the deep future, he wrote the last of the four sentences: “All ends under six feet of earth.”

Bonaparte was right. For the hero, for the soldier, for the man of the material fact, all ends under six feet of earth; for the man of the idea everything commences there.

Death is a power.

For him who has had no other action but that of the mind, the tomb is the elimination of the obstacle. To be dead, is to be all-powerful.

The man of war is formidable while alive; he stands erect, the earth is silent, siluit; he has extermination in his gesture; millions of haggard men rush to follow him, —a fierce horde, sometimes a ruffianly one; it is no longer a human head, it is a conqueror, it is a captain, it is a king of kings, it is an emperor, it is a dazzling crown of laurels which passes, throwing out lightning flashes, and allowing to be seen in starlight beneath it a vague profile of Cæsar. All this vision is splendid and impressive; but let only a gravel come in the liver, or an excoriation to the pylorus, —six feet of ground, and all is said. This solar spectrum vanishes. This tumultuous life falls into a hole; the human race pursues its way, leaving behind this nothingness. If this man hurricane has made some lucky rupture, like Alexander in India, Charlemagne in Scandinavia, and Bonaparte in ancient Europe, that is all that remains of him. But let some passer-by, who has in him the ideal, let a poor wretch like Homer throw out a word in the darkness, and die, —that word burns up in the gloom and becomes a star.