ncreasing embarrassments;
and the government, fearing still greater disorders, was making ready
to repress any that might break out in districts known to be specially
disaffected. All this was apparently of secondary importance to young
Buonaparte; he had a scheme to use the crisis for the benefit of his
family. Compelled by their utter destitution at the time of his
father's death, he had temporarily and for that occasion assumed his
father's role of suppliant. Now for a second time he sent in a
petition. It was written in Paris, dated November ninth, 1787, and
addressed, in his mother's behalf, to the intendant for Corsica
resident at the French capital. His name and position must have
carried some weight, it could not have been the mere effrontery of an
adventurer which secured him a hearing at Versailles, an interview
with the prime minister, Lomenie de Brienne, and admission to all the
minor officials who might deal with his mother's claim. All these
privileges he declares that he had enjoyed and the statements must
have been true. The petition was prefaced by a personal letter
containing them. Though a supplication in form, the request is unlike
his father's humble and almost cringing papers, being rather a demand
for justice than a petition for favor; it is unlike them in another
respect, because it contains a falsehood, or at least an utterly
misleading half-truth: a statement that he had shortened his leave
because of his mother's urgent necessities.

The paper was not handed in until after the expiration of his leave,
and his true object was not to rejoin his regiment, as was hinted in
it, but to secure a second extension of leave. Such was the slackness
of discipline that he spent all of November and the first half of
December in Paris. During this period he made acquaintance with the
darker side of Paris life. The papers numbered four, five, and six in
the Fesch collection give a fairly detailed account of one adventure
and his bitter repentance. The second suggests the writing of history
as an antidote for unhappiness, and the last is a long, rambling
effusion in denunciation of pleasure, passion, and license; of
gallantry as utterly incompatible with patriotism. His acquaintance
with history is ransacked for examples. Still another short effusion
which may belong to the same period is in the form of an imaginary
letter, saturated likewise with the Corsican spirit, addressed by King
Theodore to Walpole. It