A habitual casuistry is
further shown in an interesting letter written at the same time to M.
James, a business friend of Joseph's at Chalons, in which there occurs
a passage of double meaning, to the effect that his elder brother
"hopes to come in person the following year as deputy to the National
Assembly," which was no doubt true; for, in spite of being
incapacitated by age, he had already sat in the Corsican convention
and in the Ajaccio councils. But the imperfect French of the passage
could also mean, and, casually read, does carry the idea, that Joseph,
being already a deputy, would visit his friend the following year in
person.

Buonaparte's connection with his old regiment was soon to be broken.
He joined it on February thirteenth; he left it on June fourteenth.
With these four months his total service was five years and nine
months; but he had been absent, with or without leave, something more
than half the time! His old friends in Auxonne were few in number, if
indeed there were any at all. No doubt his fellow-officers were tired
of performing the absentee's duties, and of good-fellowship there
could be in any case but little, with such difference of taste,
politics, and fortune as there was between him and them. However, he
made a few new friends; but it was in the main the old solitary life
which he resumed. His own room was in a cheap lodging-house, and,
according to the testimony of a visitor, furnished with a wretched
uncurtained couch, a table, and two chairs. Louis slept on a pallet in
a closet near by. All pleasures but those of hope were utterly
banished from those plucky lives, while they studied in preparation
for the examination which might admit the younger to his brother's
corps. The elder pinched and scraped to pay the younger's board;
himself, according to a probable but rather untrustworthy account,
brushing his own clothes that they might last longer, and supping
often on dry bread. His only place of resort was the political club.
One single pleasure he allowed himself--the occasional purchase of
some long-coveted volume from the shelves of a town bookseller.[24]

[Footnote 24: Napoleon inconnu, II, 108 _et seq._]

Of course neither authorship nor publication was forgotten. During
these months were completed the two short pieces, a "Dialogue on
Love," and the acute "Reflections on the State of Nature," from both
of which quotations have already been given. "I too was once