everywhere as a brother and compatriot," without any accident or
insult ever suggesting to him that his confidence was not well
grounded." At Bocognano,[14] where his mother, pregnant with him, had
taken refuge, "where hatred and vengeance extended to the seventh
degree of relationship, and where the dowry of a young girl was
estimated by the number of her Cousins, I was feasted and made
welcome, and everybody would have died for me." Forced to become a
Frenchman, transplanted to France, educated at the expense of the king
in a French school, he became rigid in his insular patriotism, and
loudly extolled Paoli, the liberator, against whom his relations had
declared themselves. "Paoli," said he, at the dinner table,[15]" was
a great man. He loved his country. My father was his adjutant, and
never will I forgive him for having aided in the union of Corsica with
France. He should have followed her fortunes and have succumbed only
with her." Throughout his youth he is at heart anti-French, morose,
"bitter, liking very few and very little liked, brooding over
resentment," like a vanquished man, always moody and compelled to work
against the grain. At Brienne, he keeps aloof from his comrades,
takes no part in their sports, shuts himself in the library, and opens
himself up only to Bourrienne in explosions of hatred: "I will do you
Frenchmen all the harm I can! - "Corsican by nation and character,"
wrote his professor of history in the Military Academy, "he will go
far if circumstances favor him."[16] - Leaving the Academy, and in
garrison at Valence and Auxonne, he remains always hostile,
denationalized; his old bitterness returns, and, addressing his
letters to Paoli, he says: "I was born when our country perished.
Thirty thousand Frenchmen vomited on our shores, drowning the throne
of liberty in floods of blood -such was the odious spectacle on which
my eyes first opened! The groans of the dying, the shrieks of the
oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle from my birth. . .