The behavior of the pale, feverish, masterful young lieutenant was far from praiseworthy. He filled the house with his new-fangled philosophy, and assumed a self-important air. Among the letters which he wrote was one dated April first, 1787, to the renowned Dr. Tissot of Lausanne, referring to his correspondent’s interest in Paoli, and asking advice concerning the treatment of the canon’s gout. The physician never replied, and the epistle was found among his papers marked “unanswered and of little interest.” The old ecclesiastic listened to his nephew’s patriotic tirades, and even approved; Mme. de Buonaparte coldly disapproved. She would have preferred calmer, more efficient common sense. Not that her son was inactive in her behalf; on the contrary, he began a series of busy representations to the provincial officials which secured some good will and even trifling favor to the family. But the results were not conclusive, for the mulberry money was not paid.

 As the time for return to service drew near, he applied, on the ground of ill health, for a renewal of leave to last five and a half months. It was granted, and the regular round of family cares went on; but the days and weeks brought no relief. Ill health there was, and perhaps sufficient to justify that plea, but the physical fever was intensified by the checks which want set upon ambition. The passion for authorship reasserted itself with undiminished violence. The history of Corsica was resumed, recast, and vigorously continued, while at the same time the writer completed a short story entitled “The Count of Essex,” — with an English setting, of course, — and wrote a Corsican novel. The latter abounds in bitterness against France, the most potent force in the development of the plot being the dagger. The author’s use of French, though easier, is still very imperfect. A slight essay, or rather story, in the style of Voltaire, entitled “The Masked Prophet,” was also completed.

 It was reported early in the autumn that many regiments were to be mobilized for special service, among them that of La Fère. This gave Napoleon exactly the opening he desired, and he left Corsica at once, without reference to the end of his furlough. He reached Paris in October, a fortnight before he was due, to find his regiment near by at St. Denis, on its way to the west, where incipient tumults were presaging the coming storm. The Estates-General of France were about to meet for the first time in one hundred and seventy-five years; they had last met in 1614, and had broken up in disorder. They were now called as a last remedy, not understood, but at least untried, for ever-increasing embarrassments; and the government, fearing still greater disorders, was making ready to repress any that might break out in districts known to be specially disaffected. All this was of secondary importance to Buonaparte; he had a scheme to use the crisis for the benefit of his family. Compelled by their utter destitution at the time of his father’s death, he had temporarily and for one occasion assumed his father’s role of suppliant. Now for a second time he sent in a petition. It was written in Paris and addressed, in his mother’s behalf, to the intendant for Corsica resident at the capital. Though a supplication in form, it is unlike his father’s humble and almost cringing papers, being rather a demand than a request; it is unlike them in another respect in that it contains a falsehood, or at least an utterly misleading half-truth: a statement that he had shortened his leave because of his mother’s urgent necessities.

The paper was not handed in until after the expiration of his leave, and his true object was not to rejoin his regiment, as was hinted in it, but to secure a second extension of leave. Such was the slackness of discipline that he spent all of November and the first half of December in Paris, remaining in that city until he actually succeeded in procuring permission to spend the next six months in Corsica. He was quite as disingenuous in his request to the Minister of War as in his memorial to the intendant for Corsica, representing that the estates of Corsica were about to meet, and that his presence was essential to safeguard important interests which in his absence would be seriously compromised. Whatever such a plea may have meant, his serious cares as the real head of the family were ever uppermost, and never neglected. Louis had, as was feared, lost his appointment, and though not past the legal age, was really too old to await another vacancy; Lucien was determined to leave Brienne in any case, and to await at Aix the first chance which might arise of entering the seminary. Napoleon made some provision — what it was is not known — for Louis’s further temporary stay at Brienne, and then took Lucien with him as far as their route lay together. He reached his home again on the first of January, 1788.

The affairs of the family were at last utterly desperate, and were likely, moreover, to grow worse before they grew better. The old archdeacon was failing daily, and, although known to have means, declared himself destitute of ready money. With his death would disappear a portion of his income; his patrimony and savings, which the Buonapartes hoped of course to inherit, were an uncertain quantity, probably insufficient for the needs of such a family. The mulberry money was still unpaid; all hope of wresting the ancestral estates from the government authorities was buried; Joseph was without employment, and, as a last expedient, was studying in Pisa for admission to the bar. Louis and Lucien were each a heavy charge; Napoleon’s income was insufficient even for his own modest wants, regulated though they were by the strictest economy. Who shall cast a stone at the shiftiness of a boy not yet nineteen, charged with such cares yet consumed with ambition, and saturated with the romantic sentimentalism of his times? Some notion of his embarrassment and despair can be obtained from a rapid survey of his mental states and the corresponding facts. An ardent republican and revolutionary, he was tied by the strongest bonds to the most despotic monarchy in Europe. A patriotic Corsican, he was the servant of his country’s oppressor. Conscious of great ability, he was seeking an outlet in the pursuit of literature, a line of work entirely unsuited to his powers. The head and support of a large family, he was almost penniless; if he should follow his convictions, he and they might be altogether so. In the period of choice and requiring room for experiment, he saw himself doomed to a fixed, inglorious career, and caged in a framework of unpropitious circumstance. Whatever the moral obliquity in his feeble expedients, there is the pathos of human limitations in their character.

Whether the resolution had long before been taken, or was of recent formation, Napoleon now intended to make fame and profit go hand in hand. Returned to Ajaccio, the meeting of the Corsican estates was forgotten, and authorship was resumed, not merely with the ardor of one who writes from inclination, but with the regular drudgery of a craftsman. The amusements of his leisure hours would have been sufficient occupation for most men. Regulating, as far as possible, his mother’s complicated affairs, he journeyed frequently to Bastia, probably to collect money due for young mulberry-trees which had been sold, possibly to get material for his history. He also completed a plan for the defense of St. Florent, of La Mortilla, and of the Gulf of Ajaccio; drew up a report on the organization of the Corsican militia; and wrote a paper on the strategic importance of the Madeleine Islands. This was his play; his work was the history of Corsica. It was completed sooner than he had expected, and, anxious to reap the pecuniary harvest of his labors, he left for France in the early part of May to secure its publication. Although dedicated at first to a powerful patron, Monseigneur Marbeuf, then bishop of Sens, like many works from the pen of genius it is still in manuscript.

 The book was of moderate size, and of moderate merit. Its form, repeatedly changed from motives of expediency, was at first that of letters addressed to the Abbé Raynal; its contents display little research and no scholarship. The style is intended to be popular, and is dramatic rather than narrative. There is exhibited, as everywhere in these early writings, an intense hatred of France, a glowing affection for Corsica and her heroes. A very short account of one chapter will sufficiently characterize the whole work. Having outlined in perhaps the most effective passage the career of Sampiero, and sketched his diplomatic failures at all the European courts except that of Constantinople, where at last he had secured sympathy and was promised aid, the author depicts the patriot’s bitterness when recalled by the news of his wife’s treachery. Confronting his guilty spouse, deaf to every plea for pity, hardened against the tender caresses of his children, the Corsican hero utters judgment. “Madam,” he sternly says, “in the face of crime and disgrace, there is no other resort but death.” Vannina at first falls unconscious, but, regaining her senses, she recalls the memory of her earlier virtue, and, facing her fate, begs as a last favor that no base executioner shall lay his soiled hands on the wife of Sampiero, but that he himself shall execute the sentence. Vannina’s behavior moves her husband, but does not touch his heart. “The pity and tenderness,” says Buonaparte, “which she should have awakened found a soul thenceforward closed to the power of sentiment. Vanning died. She died by the hands of Sampiero.”

 Neither the publishers of Valence, nor those of Dôle, nor those of Auxonne, would accept the work. At Paris one was finally found who was willing to take a half risk. The author, disillusioned but sanguine, was on the point of accepting the proposition, and was occupied with considering ways and means, when the Bishop of Sens was suddenly disgraced. The manuscript was immediately copied and revised, with the result, probably, of making its tone more intensely Corsican; for it was now to be dedicated to Paoli. The literary aspirant must have foreseen the coming crash, and must have felt that the exile was to be again the liberator, and perhaps the master, of his native land. At any rate, he abandoned the idea of immediate publication, possibly in the dawning hope that as Paoli’s lieutenant he could make Corsican history better than he could write it. It is this copy which has been preserved; the original was probably destroyed.

The other literary efforts of this feverish time were not as successful even as those in historical writing. The stories are wild and crude; one only, “The Masked Prophet,” has any merit or interest whatsoever. Though more finished than the others, its style is also abrupt and full of surprises; the scene and characters are Oriental; the plot is a feeble invention. An ambitious and rebellious ameer is struck with blindness, and has recourse to a silver mask to deceive his followers. Unsuccessful, he poisons them all, throws their corpses into pits of quicklime, then leaps in himself, to deceive the world and leave no trace of mortality behind. His enemies believe, as he desired, that he and his people have been taken up into heaven. The whole, however, is dimly prescient, and the concluding lines of the fable have been thought by believers in augury to be prophetic. “Incredible instance! How far can the passion for fame go!” Among the papers of this period are also a constitution for the “calotte,” a secret society in the army, and many political notes. One of these is a project for an essay on royal power, intended to treat of its origin and to display its usurpations, and which closes with these words: “There are but few kings who do not deserve to be dethroned.”

The various absences of Buonaparte from his regiment up to this time are antagonistic to our modern ideas of military duty. The subsequent ones seem simply inexplicable, even in a service so lax as that of the crumbling Bourbon dynasty. He did not reach Auxonne, where the artillery regiment La Fère was now stationed, until the end of May, 1788. He remained there less than a year and a half, and then actually obtained another leave of absence, from September tenth, 1789, to February, 1791, which he fully intended should end in his retirement from the French service. The incidents of this second term of garrison life are not numerous, but from the considerable body of his notes and exercises which dates from this period we know that he suddenly developed great zeal in the study of artillery, theoretical and practical, and that he redoubled his industry in the pursuit of historical and political science. In the former line of work he made the acquaintance of Duteil, a brother of whom befriended him at Toulon; in the latter he read Plato and examined the constitutions of antiquity, devouring with avidity what literature he could find concerning Venice, Turkey, Tatary, and Arabia. At the same time he carefully read the history of England, and made some accurate observations on the condition of contemporaneous politics in France. His last disappointment had rendered him more taciturn and misanthropic than ever; it seems clear that he was working to become an expert, not for the benefit of France, but for that of Corsica. Charged with the oversight of some slight works on the fortifications, he displayed such incompetence that he was actually punished by a short arrest. Misfortune still pursued the family. The youth who had been appointed to Brienne when Louis was expecting a scholarship suddenly died. Mme. de Buonaparte was true to the family tradition, and immediately forwarded a petition for the place, but was, as before, unsuccessful. Lucien was not yet admitted to Aix; Joseph was a barrister, to be sure, but briefless. Napoleon once again, but for the last time,—and with marked impatience, even with impertinence,—took up the task of solicitation. The only result was a good-humored, non-committal reply. Meantime the first mutterings of the revolutionary outbreak were heard, and spasmodic disorders, trifling but portentous, were breaking out, not only among the people, but even among the royal troops. One of these, at Beurre, was occasioned by the news that the hated and notorious syndicate existing under the scandalous agreement with the King known as the “Bargain of Famine” had been making additional purchases of grain from two merchants of that town. This was in April, 1789. Buonaparte was put in command of a company and sent to aid in suppressing the riot. But it was ended before he arrived; on May first he returned to Auxonne.

 Four days later the Estates met at Versailles. What was passing in the mind of the restless, bitter, disappointed Corsican is again plainly revealed. A famous letter to Paoli, to which reference has already been made, is dated June twelfth. It is a justification of his cherished work as the only means open to a poor man, the slave of circumstances, for summoning the French administration to the bar of public opinion; viz., by comparing it with Paoli’s. Willing to face the consequences, the writer asks for documentary materials and for moral support, ending with ardent assurances of devotion from his family, his mother, and himself. But there is a ring of false coin in many of its words and sentences. The “infamy” of those who betrayed Corsica was the infamy of his own father; the “devotion” of the Buonaparte family had been to the French interest, in order to secure free education, with support for their children, in France. The “enthusiasm” of Napoleon was a cold, unsentimental determination to push their fortunes, which, with opposite principles, would have been honorable enough. In later years Lucien said that he had made two copies of the history. It was probably one of these which has been preserved. Whether or not Paoli read the book does not appear. Be that as it may, his reply to Buonaparte’s letter, written some months later, was not calculated to encourage the would-be historian. Without absolutely refusing the documents asked for by the aspiring writer, he explained that he had no time to search for them, and that, besides, Corsican history was only important in any sense by reason of the men who had made it, not by reason of its achievements. Among other bits of fatherly counsel was this: “You are too young to write history. Make ready for such an enterprise slowly. Patiently collect your anecdotes and facts. Accept the opinions of other writers with reserve.” As if to soften the severity of his advice, there follows a strain of modest self-depreciation: “Would that others had known less of me and I more of myself. Probe diu vivimus; may our descendants so live that they shall speak of me merely as one who had good intentions.”

 Buonaparte’s last shift in the treatment of his book was most undignified and petty. With the unprincipled resentment of despair, in want of money, not of advice, he entirely remodeled it for the third time, its chapters being now put as fragmentary traditions into the mouth of a Corsican mountaineer. In this form it was dedicated to Necker, the famous Swiss, who as French minister of finance was vainly struggling with the problem of how to distribute taxation equally, and to collect from the privileged classes their share. A copy was first sent to a former teacher for criticism. His judgment was extremely severe both as to expression and style. In particular, attention was called to the disadvantage of indulging in so much rhetoric for the benefit of an overworked public servant like Necker, and to the inappropriateness of putting his own metaphysical generalizations and captious criticism of French royalty into the mouth of a peasant mountaineer. Before the correspondence ended, Napoleon’s student life was over. Necker had fled, the French Revolution was rushing on with ever-increasing speed, and the young adventurer, despairing of success as a writer, seized the proffered opening to become a man of action.