The favourable wind which had constantly prevailed after the first twenty days of our voyage still continued while we kept along the coast of Sardinia; but after we had passed that island the wind again blew violently from the west, and on the 1st of October we were forced to enter the Gulf of Ajaccio.  We sailed again next day but we found it impossible to work our way out of the gulf.  We were therefore obliged to put into the port and land at Ajaccio.  Adverse winds obliged us to remain there until the 7th of October.  It may readily be imagined how much this delay annoyed Bonaparte.  He sometimes expressed his impatience, as if he could enforce the obedience of the elements as well as of men.  He was losing time, and time was everything to him.

There was one circumstance which seemed to annoy him as much as any of his more serious vexations.  “What will become of me,” said he, “if the English, who are cruising hereabout, should learn that I have landed in Corsica?  I shall be forced to stay here.  That I could never endure.  I have a torrent of relations pouring upon me.”  His great reputation had certainly prodigiously augmented the number of his family.  He was over whelmed with visits, congratulations, and requests.  The whole town was in a commotion.  Every one of its inhabitants wished to claim him as their cousin; and from the-prodigious number of his pretended godsons and goddaughters, it might have been supposed that he had held one-fourth of the children of Ajaccio at the baptismal font.

Bonaparte frequently walked with us in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio; and when in all the plenitude of his power he did not count his crowns with greater pleasure than he evinced in pointing out to us the little domains of his ancestors.

While we were at, Ajaccio M. Fesch gave Bonaparte French money in, exchange for a number of Turkish sequins, amounting in value to 17,000 francs:  This sum was all that the General brought with him from Egypt.  I mention this fact because he was unjustly calumniated in letters written after his departure, and which were intercepted and published by the English:  I ought also to add, that as he would never for his own private use resort to the money-chest of the army, the contents of which were, indeed, never half sufficient to defray the necessary expenses, he several times drew on Genoa, through M. James, and on the funds he possessed in the house of Clary, 16,000, 25,000, and up to 33,000 francs.  I can bear witness that in Egypt I never saw him touch any money beyond his pay; and that he left the country poorer than he had entered it is a fact that cannot be denied.  In his notes on Egypt it appears that in one year 12,600,000 francs were received.  In this sum were included at least 2,000,000 of contributions, which were levied at the expense of many decapitations.  Bonaparte was fourteen months in Egypt, and he is said to have brought away with him 20,000,000.  Calumny may be very gratifying to certain persons, but they should at least give it a colouring of probability.  The fact is, that Bonaparte had scarcely enough to maintain himself at Ajaccio and to defray our posting expenses to Paris.