nally on October first, but for the Corsican officers a month's
grace was added, so that he was free to leave on September first.

The time spent under the summer skies of the north would have been
dreary enough if he had regularly received news from home. Utterly
without success in finding occupation in Corsica, and hopeless as to
France, Joseph had some time before turned his eyes toward Tuscany for
a possible career. He was now about to make a final effort, and seek
personally at the Tuscan capital official recognition with a view to
relearning his native tongue, now almost forgotten, and to obtaining
subsequent employment of any kind that might offer in the land of his
birth. Lucien, the archdeacon, was seriously ill, and General
Marbeuf, the last influential friend of the family, had died. Louis
had been promised a scholarship in one of the royal artillery schools;
deprived of his patron, he would probably lose the appointment.
Finally, the pecuniary affairs of Mme. de Buonaparte were again
entangled, and now appeared hopeless. She had for a time been
receiving an annual state bounty for raising mulberry-trees, as France
was introducing silk culture into the island. The inspectors had
condemned this year's work, and were withholding a substantial portion
of the allowance. These were the facts and they probably reached
Napoleon at Valence; it was doubtless a knowledge of them which put an
end to all his light-heartedness and to his study, historical or
political. He immediately made ready to avail himself of his leave so
that he might instantly set out to his mother's relief.

Despondent and anxious, he moped, grew miserable, and contracted a
slight malarial fever which for the next six or seven years never
entirely relaxed its hold on him. Among his papers has recently been
found the long, wild, pessimistic rhapsody to which reference has
already been made and in which there is talk of suicide. The plaint is
of the degeneracy among men, of the destruction of primitive
simplicity in Corsica by the French occupation, of his own isolation,
and of his yearning to see his friends once more. Life is no longer
worth while; his country gone, a patriot has naught to live for,
especially when he has no pleasure and all is pain--when the character
of those about him is to his own as moonlight is to sunlight. If there
were but a single life in his way, he would bury the avenging blade of
his country and her violated laws in t