he bosom of the tyrant. Some of
his complaining was even less coherent than this. It is absurd to take
the morbid outpouring seriously, except in so far as it goes to prove
that its writer was a victim of the sentimental egoism into which the
psychological studies of the eighteenth century had degenerated, and
to suggest that possibly if he had not been Napoleon he might have
been a Werther. Though dated May third, no year is given, and it may
well describe the writer's feelings in any period of despondency. No
such state of mind was likely to have arisen in the preceding spring,
but it may have been written even then as a relief to pent-up feelings
which did not appear on the surface; or possibly in some later year
when the agony of suffering for himself and his family laid hold upon
him. In any case it expresses a bitter melancholy, such as would be
felt by a boy face to face with want.

At Valence Napoleon visited his old friend the Abbe Saint-Ruf, to
solicit favor for Lucien, who, having left Brienne, would study
nothing but the humanities, and was determined to become a priest. At
Aix he saw both his uncle Fesch and his brother. At Marseilles he is
said to have paid his respects to the Abbe Raynal, requesting advice,
and seeking further encouragement in his historical labors. This is
very doubtful, for there is no record of Raynal's return to France
before 1787. Lodging in that city, as appears from a memorandum on his
papers, with a M. Allard, he must soon have found a vessel sailing for
his destination, because he came expeditiously to Ajaccio, arriving in
that city toward the middle of the month, if the ordinary time had
been consumed in the journey. Such appears to be the likeliest account
of this period, although our knowledge is not complete. In the
archives of Douay, there is, according to an anonymous local
historian, a record of Buonaparte's presence in that city with the
regiment of La Fere, and he is quoted as having declared at Elba to
Sir Neil Campbell that he had been sent thither. But in the "Epochs of
My Life," he wrote that he left Valence on September first, 1786, for
Ajaccio, arriving on the fifteenth. Weighing the probabilities, it
seems likely that the latter was doubtful, since there is but the
slenderest possibility of his having been at Douay in the following
year, the only other hypothesis, and there exists no record of his
activities in Corsica before the spring of 1787. The chronology of