n the eyes of my persecutors, and that if so
cruel an order was not revoked, at least a reasonable delay, perhaps the
whole winter, to make the necessary preparations for my retreat, and to
choose a place of abode, would be granted me.

Whilst I waited for an answer, I reflected upon my situation, and
deliberated upon the steps I had to take. I perceived so many
difficulties on all sides, the vexation I had suffered had so strongly
affected me, and my health was then in such a bad state, that I was quite
overcome, and the effect of my discouragement was to deprive me of the
little resource which remained in my mind, by which I might, as well as
it was possible to do it, have withdrawn myself from my melancholy
situation. In whatever asylum I should take refuge, it appeared
impossible to avoid either of the two means made use of to expel me.
One of which was to stir up against me the populace by secret manoeuvres;
and the other to drive me away by open force, without giving a reason for
so doing. I could not, therefore, depend upon a safe retreat, unless I
went in search of it farther than my strength and the season seemed
likely to permit. These circumstances again bringing to my recollection
the ideas which had lately occurred to me, I wished my persecutors to
condemn me to perpetual imprisonment rather than oblige me incessantly to
wander upon the earth, by successively expelling me from the asylums of
which I should make choice: and to this effect I made them a proposal.
Two days after my first letter to M. de Graffenried, I wrote him a
second, desiring he would state what I had proposed to their
excellencies. The answer from Berne to both was an order, conceived in
the most formal and severe terms, to go out of the island, and leave
every territory, mediate and immediate of the republic, within the space
of twenty-four hours, and never to enter them again under the most
grievous penalties.

This was a terrible moment. I have since that time felt greater anguish,
but never have I been more embarrassed. What afflicted me most was being
forced to abandon the project which had made me desirous to pass the
winter in the island. It is now time I should relate the fatal anecdote
which completed my disasters, and involved in my ruin an unfortunate
people, whose rising virtues already promised to equal those of Rome and
Sparta, I had spoken of the Corsicans in the 'Social Contract' as a new
people, the only nation i