In October, 1787, Napoleon was again in Paris, petitioning the government in behalf of his mother, and seeking to have his furlough extended. Failing as to his mother, succeeding as to himself, he was back home in January, 1788, and remained there until June of the same year. While in Corsica, Napoleon frequently dined with brother officers in the French army. Between him and them, however, there was little congeniality. He was hotly Paolist, and his talk was either of Corsican independence or of topics historical and governmental. His brother officers did not enjoy these conversations. His patriotism offended; his learning bored them. What did the average French officer of that day know or care about history and the science of government? The upshot of such a dinner-party usually was that Napoleon got into a wrangle with that one of the officers who imagined he knew something of the subject, while the others, who honestly realized that they did not, would walk off in disgust. “My comrades, like myself,” says M. de Renain, one of the officers in question, “lost patience with what we considered ridiculous stuff and pedantry.”
So far did Napoleon carry his patriotic sentiments that he rather plainly threatened to take sides with the Corsicans if any collision should occur between the French and his countrymen. Upon this, one of the officers who disliked him asked sharply, “Would you draw your sword against the soldiers of the King?”
Napoleon, dressed in the King’s uniform, had the good sense to remain silent. The officers were offended at his tone, and, says Renain, “This is the last time he did me the honor of dining with me.”
Not for a day had Napoleon neglected his books. To escape the household noises, he went to the attic, and there pursued his studies. Far and wide ranged his restless mind, from the exact sciences, dry and heavy, to Plato and Ossian, rich in suggestions to the most opulent imagination nature ever gave a practical man. To the very last, Napoleon remained half mystic; and when he stood in the storm the night before Waterloo, and cast into the darkness the words, “We are agreed”; or when he remained silent for hours at St. Helena watching the vast wings of the mist whirl, and turn, and soar around the summit of the bleak, barren mountain of rock, we feel that if pens were there to trace his thought, Ossian would seem to live again. From his youth up the most striking characteristic of his mind was its enormous range; its wide sweep from the pettiest, prosiest details of fact to the sublimest dreams and the most chimerical fancies. Not wholly satisfied with reading and commentary, he strove to compose. Under the Bourbons, his outlook in the army was not promising. He might hope, after many tedious years of garrison service, to become a captain; after that it would be a miracle if he rose higher. Hence his lack of interest in the routine work of a soldier, and hence his ambition to become an author. He wrote a story called The Count of Essex, also a novel founded on Corsican life, and pulsing with hatred of France. Another story which he called The Masked Prophet, is the same which Moore afterward used in The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.
His greatest exertions, however, were spent upon the History of Corsica. To this work he clung with a tenacity of purpose that is touching. All the long, tragic story of Corsica seems to have run like fire in the boy’s veins, and the heroes of his country—Paoli, Sampiero, Della Rocca—seemed to him to be as great as the men of antiquity, as perhaps they were. Therefore, the young man wrote and rewrote, trying to get the book properly written, his thoughts properly expressed. He had turned to Raynal, as we have seen, and the Abbé had kindly said, “Search further, and write it over.” And Napoleon had done so. At least three times he had recast the entire book. He sought the approval of a former teacher, Dupuy; he sent “copy” to Paoli. Dupuy had a poor opinion of the performance; and Paoli told him flatly he was too young to write history. But Napoleon persevered, finished the work, and eagerly sought publishers. Alas! the publishers shook their heads. Finally, at Paris was found a bold adventurer in the realm of book-making, who was willing to undertake half the cost if the author would furnish the other half. But for one reason or another the book was never published.
The passionate earnestness with which Napoleon toiled at his book on Corsican history, the intense sympathy with which he studied the lives of Corsican heroes, the fiery wrath he nursed against those who had stricken down Corsican liberties, were but so many evidences of the set purpose of his youth—to free his country, to give it independence. There is no doubt that the one consuming ambition of these early years was as pure as it was great: he would do what Sampiero and Paoli had failed to do—he would achieve the independence of Corsica!
Napoleon rejoined his regiment at Auxonne at the end of May, 1788. That he did so with reluctance is apparent from the manner in which he had distorted facts to obtain extension of his furlough. Garrison duty had no charms for him; the dull drudgery of daily routine became almost insupportable. It appears that he was put under arrest for the unsatisfactory manner in which he had superintended some work on the fortifications. When off duty he gave his time to his books. He became ill, and wrote to his mother, “I have no resource but work. I dress but once in eight days. I sleep but little, and take but one meal a day.” Under this regimen of no exercise, hard work, and little sleep he came near dying.
In September, 1789, came another furlough, and the wan-looking lieutenant turned his face homeward. In passing through Marseilles he paid his respects to the Abbé Raynal.