must be laid; but the spectacle disgusted him. The yells, screams, and
pikes with bloody heads upon them, formed a scene which he afterwards
described as "hideous and revolting." At this time Napoleon was without
employment and very poor; and De Bourienne describes him as wandering
idly about Paris, living, chiefly at his (M. de B.'s) expense, at
restaurateurs' shops, and, among other wild-enough schemes, proposing
that he and his schoolfellow should take some houses on lease, and
endeavour to get a little money by subletting them in apartments. Such
were the views and occupations of Buonaparte--at the moment when the
national tragedy was darkening to its catastrophe. As yet he had been
but a spectator of the Revolution, destined to pave his own path to
sovereign power; it was not long before circumstances called on him to
play a part.

General Paoli, who had lived in England ever since the termination of
that civil war in which Charles Buonaparte served under his banner, was
cheered, when the great French Revolution first broke out, with the hope
that liberty was about to be restored to Corsica. He came to Paris, was
received with applause as a tried friend of freedom, and appointed
governor of his native island, which for some time he ruled wisely and
happily. But as the revolution advanced, Paoli, like most other wise
men, became satisfied that license was more likely to be established by
its leaders, than law and rational liberty; and avowing his aversion to
the growing principles of Jacobinism, and the scenes of tumult and
bloodshed to which they gave rise, he was denounced in the National
Assembly as the enemy of France. An expedition was sent to deprive him
of his government, under the command of La Combe, Michel, and Salicetti,
one of the Corsican deputies to the Convention; and Paoli called on his
countrymen to take arms in his and their own defence.