give myself up to all the force of my melancholy. What madness makes
me desire my own destruction? Without doubt, the problem of what to
do in this world ... Life is a burden to me because I feel no pleasure
and because everything is affliction to me. It is a burden to me because
the men with whom I have to live, and will probably always live, have
ways as different from mine as the light of the moon from that of the
sun. I cannot then pursue the only manner of living which could enable
me to put up with existence, whence follows a disgust for everything.The uneventful external tenor of life at Valence ended in August 1786
when the regiment was ordered up to Lyons to suppress a strike by silk
workers; three 'ringleaders' were hanged and the strikers effectively
cowed. Napoleon, who had often expressed his homesickness for Corsica,
applied for leave and was granted it, to run from r October. Since officers
in far-flung corners of France were allowed a month's travelling time in
addition to leave, Napoleon set out for Corsica as soon as the military
intervention in Lyons was complete. At Aix-en-Provence he visited his
uncle Fesch, who had not yet completed his theological studies, and also
Lucien, who had abandoned Brienne and come down to Aix to be trained
as a priest. He finally reached Ajaccio on 15 September 1786, having been
absent from the island for nearly eight years.
The reunion with Letizia and great-uncle Lucien was a particularly
joyous one, though clouded by the financial shadows that hung over the
family. Napoleon was shocked to find his mother doing all the household
chores when he arrived home. He enquired about Joseph and learned
that, in obedience to his father's wishes, he had given up all hope of a
military career and turned to the paternal study, law. Hearing that he was
now studying law at Pisa University, Napoleon wrote to him to say that
the family honour required that Letizia be relieved of the worst drudgery;
would Joseph therefore bring back a reliable servant? When Joseph came
home a few months later, he brought with him the Italian domestic maid
Saveria, who remained in Letizia's service for forty years.
To Joseph we owe a meticulous analysis of Napoleon's reading at the
time: the classical authors in translation, especially Plutarch, Cicero,
Livy, Cornelius Nepos and Tacitus; Macpherson's Ossian, Racine,
Corneille, Voltaire, Montaigne, Montesquieu and, above all Rousseau and
the Abbe Raynal. However, all the evidence suggests that Napoleon's
reading was wide rather than deep. His knowledge of Rousseau was
superficial and he was ignorant of much of Voltaire; he knew little of
Montesquieu and less of Diderot; most surprising of all, he had not heard
of Pierre Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, published four years earlier