infants forty-five
livres. Lads received simply a present of twenty-five livres. With the
preliminary payment of one hundred and fifty livres, which they
promptly received, the Buonapartes were better off than they had been
at home. Lucien had appropriated Napoleon's certificate of birth in
order to appear older than he was, and, having now developed into a
fluent demagogue, was soon earning a small salary in the commissary
department of the army. Fesch also found a comfortable berth in the
same department. Joseph calmly displayed Napoleon's commission in the
National Guard as his own, and received a higher place with a better
salary. The sovereignty of the Convention was everywhere acknowledged,
their revolutionary courts were established far and wide, and their
legations, clothed with dictatorial power, were acknowledged in every
camp of the land as supreme, superior even to the commanders-in-chief.
It was not exactly a time for further military irregularities, and
Napoleon, armed with a certificate from Salicetti that his presence in
Corsica for the past six months had been necessary, betook himself to
the army headquarters at Nice, where a detachment of his regiment was
now stationed. When he arrived, no awkward questions were asked by the
authorities. The town had but recently been captured, men were needed
to hold it, and the Corsican refugee was promptly appointed captain of
the shore battery. To casual observers he appeared perfectly content
in this subordinate position. He still cherished the hope, it seems,
that he might find some opportunity to lead a successful expedition
against the little citadel of Ajaccio. Such a scheme, at all events,
occupied him intermittently for nearly two years, or until it was
banished forever by visions of a European control far transcending the
limits of his island home.

Not that the outcast Buonaparte was any longer exclusively a Corsican.
It is impossible to conceive of a lot more pitiful or a fate more
obdurate than his so far had been. There was little hereditary
morality in his nature, and none had been inculcated by training; he
had nothing of what is called vital piety, nor even sincere
superstition. A butt and an outcast at a French school under the old
regime, he had imbibed a bitter hatred for the land indelibly
associated with such haughty privileges for the rich and such
contemptuous disdain for the poor. He had not even the consolation of
having received an educa