t
possible mood for adventure. He was at this period suffering from
illness. His mother, too, had just communicated to him the discomforts
of her position.--She had been just obliged to fly from Corsica, where
the people were in a state of insurrection, and she was then at
Marseilles, without any means of subsistence. Napoleon had nothing
remaining, but an assignat of one hundred sous, his pay being in arrear.
"In this state of dejection I went out," said he, "as if urged to
suicide by an animal instinct, and walked along the quays, feeling my
weakness, but unable to conquer it. In a few more moments I should have
thrown myself into the water, when I ran against an individual dressed
like a simple mechanic, and who, recognising me, threw himself on my
neck, and cried, 'Is it you, Napoleon? what joy to see you again!' It
was Demasis, a former comrade of mine in the artillery regiment. He had
emigrated, and had returned to France in disguise, to see his aged
mother. He was about to go, when, stopping, he said, 'What is the
matter? You do not listen to me. You do not seem glad to see me. What
misfortune threatens you? You look to me, like a madman about to kill
himself.'"

This direct appeal awoke Napoleon's feelings, and he told him every
thing. "Is that all?" said he; opening his coarse waistcoat, and
detaching a belt, he added, "here are thirty thousand francs in gold,
take them and save your mother." "I cannot," said Napoleon, "to this
day, explain to myself my motives for so doing, but I seized the gold as
if by a convulsive movement, and ran like a madman to send it to my
mother. It was not until it was out of my hands, that I thought of what
I had done. I hastened back to the spot where I had left Demasis, but he
was no longer there. For several days I went out in the morning,
returning not until evening, searching every place where I hoped to find
him."

The end of the romance is as eccentric as the beginning. For fifteen
years Napoleon saw no more of his creditor. At the end of that time he
discovered him, and asked "why he had not applied to the Emperor." The
answer was, that he had no necessity for the money, but was afraid of
being compelled to quit his retirement, where he lived happily
practising horticulture.

Napoleon now paid his debt, as it maybe presumed, magnificently; made
him accept three hundred thousand francs as a reimbursement from the
Emperor for the thirty thousand lent to the subaltern of a