"In this general misery, in the midst of the cries and groans of this unhappy people, you began meanwhile to enjoy the fruits of your labour. Honours, titles, pensions rained upon you; your possessions would have increased still more rapidly if Madame Dubarry, occasioning the fall of Monsieur de Choiseul, had not deprived you of a protector who knew how to estimate your services. The blow did not discourage you; you re-established yourself by your activity in the subordinate bureaus; you saw nothing in it but the necessity of increasing your diligence. People in higher quarters found themselves flattered, your services were so notorious!... Nothing was withheld from you. Not content with the lake of Biguglia, you requested portions of the lands of several communes. How could you rob them of these? people ask. I, for my part, ask: What consideration could you be expected to have for a nation which you knew detested you?
"Your favourite project was the division of the island among ten barons. What! not content with helping to forge the chains of your country, you proposed also to subject it to an absurd feudalism! But I commend you for doing the Corsicans all the harm that was in your power; you were at war with them, and in war it is an axiom to do hurt for your own advantage.
"But passing all this wretched business, let us come to the present, and conclude a letter, the shocking length of which cannot but have tired you.
"The posture of affairs in France was ominous of extraordinary events; you dreaded their effect in Corsica. The same madness with which we were possessed before the war, began again, to your great annoyance, to deprive this amiable people of its senses. You saw what would be the consequence; for, if generous sentiments were to sway public opinion, from an honest man you became a mere traitor; if these generous sentiments stirred the blood of our fiery fellow-citizens, something more wretched still; if a national government followed, what was to become of you? Your conscience accordingly began to make you uneasy. Frightened, cast down, you still did not despair; you resolved to stake your all, but you did it like a man of sense; you took a wife to strengthen your connexions. A worthy man, who, trusting to your honour, had given his sister to your nephew, saw himself deceived. Your nephew, whose paternal inheritance you had devoured to increase a property that should have been his, found himself with a numerous family plunged into misery.
"When you had arranged your private affairs, you threw a glance upon the country. You saw it reeking with the blood of its martyrs, covered with victims, and everywhere breathing nothing but thoughts of vengeance. You saw the reckless soldier, the impudent official, the greedy tax-gatherer, lording it with none to gainsay, while the Corsican, loaded with the triple chain, did not dare to think either on what he was, or on what he might yet be. In the joy of your heart you said to yourself: 'Matters are going on well, the only point is now to preserve them as they are, and forthwith you banded yourself with the soldier, the official, and the farmer of the revenue. All your aims were now centred on obtaining deputies inspired with similar sentiments; for, as concerned yourself, you could not imagine that a nation hostile to you would elect you as its representative. But you were destined to alter this opinion when the writs, with a perhaps intentional absurdity, ordered that the deputy of the nobility should be elected in an assembly composed of only twenty-two persons—all that was necessary was to gain twelve votes. Your associates of the Supreme Council were exceedingly active; threats, promises, caresses, everything was tried: you were successful. Your candidates in the communes were not: your First President was rejected, and two men—in your opinion, of extreme ideas—the one was son, brother, nephew of the most zealous defenders of the people's cause; the other had seen Sionville and Narbonne, and, sighing over his impotence, well remembered the atrocities which he had witnessed—these two men were proclaimed, and met the wishes of the nation, whose hope they became. The secret indignation, the rage, which seized on every one, when you were elected, does honour to your intrigues, and the influence of your associates.
"On arriving in Versailles, you became a zealous royalist; in Paris you saw, to your great affliction, that the government which was being erected on the ruins of the fallen system, was the same which among us had been drowned in so much blood.
"All the exertions of the despotic party were powerless; the new constitution, the admiration of Europe, has become an object of solicitude to every thinking being. There remained for you but one means of rescue, and that was, to make it be believed that this constitution was not fitted for our island, although it was precisely the same as that which had worked so prosperously, and to deprive us of which had cost so much blood.
"All the deputies of the old administration, entering as a matter of course into your cabals, served you with the warmth of men seeking their own interest. You drew up memorials in which you affirmed that the advantages of the existing government among us were matter of experience, and in which it was represented that any alteration was contrary to the wishes of the nation. At this time the town of Ajaccio got wind of your machinations; she raised her head, formed her National Guard, organized her committee. This, intervening so unexpectedly, alarmed you. The excitement spread. You persuaded the minister, of whom you had the advantage in knowledge of Corsican affairs, that it was necessary to send your father-in-law, Monsieur Gaffori, to the island, the worthy forerunner of Monsieur Narbonne; and Monsieur Gaffori, at the head of his troops, had the impudence to attempt to maintain by violence the tyranny which his father, of glorious memory, had by his genius beaten and suppressed. Innumerable blunders disclosed the mediocre talent of your father-in-law: the only art be possessed was that of making himself enemies. On every side people were uniting against him. In this imminent danger you lifted up your eyes and saw Narbonne. Narbonne, seizing a favourable moment, had formed the plan of establishing in an island which he had desolated by unheard-of cruelties, the despotism which tormented his own conscience. You assent: the plan is adopted, five thousand men receive orders; the decree directing the provincial regiment to be increased by a battalion, is despatched; Narbonne himself sets off. This poor nation without arms, without spirit to resist, is delivered, hopeless and helpless, into the hands of its executioner.
"O unhappy fellow-citizens, what detestable intrigues were you to be the victims of! You would not have understood them till it was too late. Where were your means of withstanding, without arms, ten thousand men? You yourselves would have signed the act of your degradation, hope would have fled, hope would have been extinguished, and days of misery would have succeeded each other without intermission. Liberated France would have looked on you with contempt, afflicted Italy with indignation, and Europe, astonished at a humiliation so profound, would have torn from her annals the pages that do your virtues honour. But the deputies of your communes penetrated the design, and put you on your guard in time. A king, who has constantly desired only the happiness of his people, informed by Monsieur Lafayette, that steadfast friend of liberty, of the true state of the case, was able to crush the perfidious machinations of a minister whom revenge ceaselessly spurred on to injure you. Ajaccio showed itself resolute in its address; the lamentable condition into which the most despotic of all governments had brought you had there been so powerfully impressed on people's minds. The hitherto slumbering Bastia awoke at the sound of danger, and seized its weapons with that resolution which has ever characterized it. Arena came from Paris to Balagna full of those sentiments which make a man capable of undertaking everything, and of fearing no danger. His weapons in the one hand, the decrees of the National Assembly in the other, he made the people's enemies turn pale. Achille Murati, the conqueror of Capraja, who carried despair into Genoa itself, and who wanted but opportunity and a wider field to be a Turenne, reminded the sharers of his fame that it was time to win it over again, and that their country needed—not intrigue, which it never understood—but steel and fire. Before the rising din of a resistance so universal, Gaffori withdrew into the nothingness from which intrigue had made him emerge against his will. He remained trembling in the fortress of Corte. Narbonne hastened away from Lyons to bury his shame and his hellish plans in Rome. A few days later, and Corsica is linked to France, Paoli is recalled, and in a single instant your prospects are changed, and a new career offered you for which you would never have ventured to hope.
"Excuse me, Monsieur, excuse me; I took my pen to defend you, but my heart utterly revolted against a system which brought treachery and perfidy in its train. What! son of this same fatherland, have you never had a filial feeling towards it? What! was there no emotion in your heart at the sight of the rocks, the trees, the houses, the neighbourhoods, which were the scene of your sports in childhood? When you came to the world, it carried you on its bosom, it nourished you with its fruits. When you came to years of discretion, it set its hopes upon you, it honoured you with its confidence, it said to you: 'My son, you see the wretched state to which the injustice of men has brought me; collecting my energies in my passionate grief, I once more attain a vigour which promises me sure and infallible restoration; but I am threatened anew; hasten, my son, to Versailles; inform the great king better, dissipate his suspicions, implore his friendship.'