Napoleon sometimes told interesting tales of his early career. One of those, if true, shows how near the world was to the loss of an Emperor. After the siege of Toulon, which his panegyrists regard as the first step to his good fortune, he returned to Paris, apparently in the worst 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 artillery; and besides, made him director-general of the gardens of the crown, with a salary of thirty thousand francs. He also gave a government place to his brother.