e idea of immediate publication, possibly
in the dawning hope that as Paoli's lieutenant he could make Corsican
history better than he could write it. It is this copy which has been
preserved; the original was probably destroyed.

The other literary efforts of this feverish time were not as
successful even as those in historical writing. The stories are wild
and crude; one only, "The Masked Prophet," has any merit or interest
whatsoever. Though more finished than the others, its style is also
abrupt and full of surprises; the scene and characters are Oriental;
the plot is a feeble invention. An ambitious and rebellious Ameer is
struck with blindness, and has recourse to a silver mask to deceive
his followers. Unsuccessful, he poisons them all, throws their corpses
into pits of quicklime, then leaps in himself, to deceive the world
and leave no trace of mortality behind. His enemies believe, as he
desired, that he and his people have been taken up into heaven. The
whole, however, is dimly prescient, and the concluding lines of the
fable have been thought by believers in augury to be prophetic.
"Incredible instance! How far can the passion for fame go!" Among the
papers of this period are also a constitution for the "calotte," a
secret society of his regiment organized to keep its members up to the
mark of conduct expected from gentlemen and officers, and many
political notes. One of these rough drafts is a project for an essay
on royal power, intended to treat of its origin and to display its
usurpations, and which closes with these words: "There are but few
kings who do not deserve to be dethroned."

The various absences of Buonaparte from his regiment up to this time
are antagonistic to our modern ideas of military duty. The subsequent
ones seem simply inexplicable, even in a service so lax as that of the
crumbling Bourbon dynasty. Almost immediately after Joseph's return,
on the first of June he sailed for France. He did not reach Auxonne,
where the artillery regiment La Fere was now stationed, until early in
that month, 1788. He remained there less than a year and a half, and
then actually obtained another leave of absence, from September tenth,
1789, to February, 1791, which he fully intended should end in his
retirement from the French service.[18] The incidents of this second
term of garrison life are not numerous, but from the considerable
body of his notes and exercises which dates from the period we know
that