“I am in a peasant’s hut writing to you, after a long talk with the good folk.... It is four in the afternoon; the weather is fresh but mild; I thoroughly enjoyed walking. No snow yet, but there is snow in the air—Everywhere I have found the peasants staunch; ... they are all ready to die for the constitution—The women are royalists almost without exception. No wonder for that, seeing that Liberty is fairer than they, and eclipses them. In Dauphiné, the priests have taken the oath of fealty to the constitution; they laugh at the bishops.—‘Good society,’ as it is called (three out of four are aristocrats), affects admiration for the British constitution. It is true that Peretti threatened Mirabeau with a dagger. This is little to our credit. The Patriotic Society must make Mirabeau a present of our national costume: biretta, vest, knee-breeches and hose, cartridge pouch, stiletto, pistol, and musket. It will certainly have a good effect.”

Everything in this letter to Napoleon’s maternal uncle, the abbé Joseph Fesch, bears witness to observation and calculation, the elements upon which the politician’s influence is based: the weather, the State, travelling on foot, the conciliation of a man in high position, men’s motives—all have been the objects of careful consideration. Vanity and avarice, these are the weaknesses to which an appeal can be successfully directed. We see deep into his soul when, in a bluntly-worded letter dating from those weeks, he arraigns an opponent thus: “Your study of human nature has taught you the price of every man’s enthusiasm; for you, the difference between people’s characters was summed up in a few gold pieces more or less!”

Gold pieces! Where were they to be had? Louis, the brother of thirteen, had come back to France with him. When Lieutenant Buonaparte (he had the full rank now) and his brother got back to Valence, they had no more between them than eighty-five francs, to provide for food, clothing, and the boy’s education. They had to brush their own clothes.

Money! Not for enjoyment (he despises trivial pleasures), but to help him make his way in the world! Lyons Academy has offered a prize for an essay. Twelve hundred francs; one could for that sum equip half Corsica with weapons. “What truths and sentiments is it most important to inculcate upon men for their happiness?” The lieutenant smiles. The subject suits him very well. First of all, so to say, he leaves his card on the academicians who have chosen the theme. They are disciples of Rousseau. Our essayist opens by extolling the joys of nature, friendship, ardent idleness—three things which he neither knew nor prized. Suddenly the argument takes a political turn, against kings, and on behalf of the universalisation of the free enjoyment of possessions and rights. Then comes a sinister tone, as if the writer were contemplating in a mirror his own image as the pallid student of a few years before: “The ambitious man, pale of countenance, laughing sardonically, plays with crime, and intrigue is his chosen instrument.... If, at length, he gets his hand on the rudder of power, he soon wearies of the adulation of the crowd.... Men of great ambition have sought happiness, and have found fame.”

Sublime forebodings, worthy of any of the characters in Plutarch. Soon the author expresses himself more plainly. His ideal is Sparta; courage and strength are the outstanding virtues. A Spartan moved through life as a man moves in the plenitude of his powers. “He was happy because he lived in accordance with his nature. Only the strong man is good; the weakling is evil.” Another presage glows in the following utterance: “Men who are truly great are like meteors: they shine and consume themselves, that they may lighten the darkness of the earth.”

This was too much for the Lyons Academy, which declared the essay “unworthy of commendation.” A fresh disappointment! The effort had brought neither money nor renown. With indefatigable assiduity, none the less, he resumes work on his Corsican novel, and pens a dialogue on love.

What? Does this word, too, shed its lustre into the youth’s sombre mind? Are we to have an outpouring in the Rousseauist vein? Hearken to the words of our lieutenant, now twenty-two years of age: “I, too, was in love once, and learned enough of it to despise definitions, which only confuse the issue. I deny its justification; nay, more, I regard it as injurious to society and destructive to the happiness of the individual. Men could bless heaven if they were quit of it.”

Fanfares interrupt these political and social musings, fanfares from Paris! Louis XVI, attempting to escape, had been caught at Varennes and brought back. The people had triumphed, and the revolutionary movement was intensified. On the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, the Red lieutenant proposed a toast to the patriots. From the island came to him sounds of confusion, the heart-beats of anarchy—for during these wild years the ripples of turbulence spread from Paris in widening circles, to reach distant shores. In Corsica, too, civil war is imminent. Back there, for a second venture!