ever “surrounded by enthusiasts, and as failing to understand in a man any other passion than fanaticism for liberty and independence,” and as duped by Buttafuoco in 1768.[14] The phrase has an obvious reference to the Paoli of 1791, surrounded by men who had shared his long exile and regarded the English constitution as their model.  Buonaparte, on the contrary, is the accredited champion of French democracy, his furious epistle being printed by the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio.

After firing off this tirade Buonaparte returned to his regiment at Auxonne (February, 1791).  It was high time; for his furlough, though prolonged on the plea of ill-health, had expired in the preceding October, and he was therefore liable to six months’ imprisonment.  But the young officer rightly gauged the weakness of the moribund monarchy; and the officers of his almost mutinous regiment were glad to get him back on any terms.  Everywhere in his journey through Provence and Dauphine, Buonaparte saw the triumph of revolutionary principles.  He notes that the peasants are to a man for the Revolution; so are the rank and file of the regiment.  The officers are aristocrats, along with three-fourths of those who belong to “good society”:  so are all the women, for “Liberty is fairer than they, and eclipses them.”  The Revolution was evidently gaining completer hold over his mind and was somewhat blurring his insular sentiments, when a rebuff from Paoli further weakened his ties to Corsica.  Buonaparte had dedicated to him his work on Corsica, and had sent him the manuscript for his approval.  After keeping it an unconscionable time, the old man now coldly replied that he did not desire the honour of Buonaparte’s panegyric, though he thanked him heartily for it; that the consciousness of having done his duty sufficed for him in his old age; and, for the rest, history should not be written in youth.  A further request from Joseph Buonaparte for the return of the slighted manuscript brought the answer that he, Paoli, had no time to search his papers.  After this, how could hero-worship subsist?

The four months spent by Buonaparte at Auxonne were, indeed, a time of disappointment and hardship.  Out of his slender funds he paid for the education of his younger brother, Louis, who shared his otherwise desolate lodging.  A room almost bare but for a curtainless bed, a table heaped with books and papers, and two chairs—­such were the surroundings of the lieutenant in the spring of 1791.  He lived on bread that he might rear his brother for the army, and that he might buy books, overjoyed when his savings mounted to the price of some coveted volume.