The house, the possessions of the Bonaparte family, fell a prey to the conquerors, and on them they gave vent to their vengeance for the successful escape of the fugitives.  A witness of these facts is a certificate which Joseph Bonaparte a few months later procured from Corsica, and which ran as follows: 

“I, the undersigned, Louis Conti, procurator-syndic of the district of Ajaccio, department of Corsica, declare and certify:  in the month of May of this year, when General Paoli and the administration of the department had sent into the city of Ajaccio armed troops, in concert with other traitors in the city, took possession of the fortress, drove away the administration of the district, incarcerated a large portion of the patriots, disarmed the republican forces, and, when these refused to give up the commissioners of the National Convention, Paoli’s troops fired upon the vessel which carried these commissioners: 

“That these rebels endeavored to seize the Bonaparte family, which had the good fortune to elude their pursuit: 

“That they destroyed, plundered, and burnt everything which belonged to this family, whose sole crime consisted in their unswerving fidelity to the republicans, and in their refusal to take any part in the scheme of isolation, rebellion, and disloyalty, of which Paoli and the administration of the department had become guilty.

“I moreover declare and certify that this family, consisting of ten individuals, and who stood high in the esteem of the people of the island, possessed the largest property in the whole department, and that now they are on the continent of the republic.

“(Signed) Conti, Proc.-Synd.  Delivered on the 5th of September, 1793, Year ii. of the republic.” [Footnote:  “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 52.]

Paoli, the conqueror of the French republic, the patriotic enemy of the Bonaparte family, drove Napoleon Bonaparte from his native soil!  The cannon of the Corsican patriots fired upon the ship on which the future emperor of the French was steering toward his future empire!

But this future lay still in an invisible, cloudy distance—­of one thing, however, was the young captain of artillery fully conscious:  from this hour he had broken with the past, and, by his dangers and conflicts, by the sacrifice of his family’s property, by his flight from Corsica, given to the world a solemn testimony that he recognized no other country, that he owed allegiance to no other nation than to France.  He had proved that his feelings were not Corsican, but French.

The days of his childhood and youth sank away behind him, with the deepening shadows of the island of Corsica, and the shores which rose before him on the horizon were the shores of France.  There lay his future—­his empire!

CHAPTER XVII.

Napoleon Bonaparte before Toulon.