The Revolution of 1789 turned Napoleon’s mind to an ambition greater than that of writing the history of Corsica—he would free Corsica. The National Assembly had lifted the island from its inferior relation and made it a department of France, but sentiment was much divided, and the ferment was similar to that which agitated the mainland. Napoleon, deeply interested in the progress of the new liberal ideas, and seeing, too, the opportunity for a soldier and an agitator among his countrymen, hastened home, where he spent some twenty-five months out of the next two and a half years. That the young officer spent five-sixths of his time in Corsica, instead of in service, and that he in more than one instance pleaded reasons for leaves of absence which one would have to be exceedingly unsophisticated not to see were trumped up for the occasion, cannot be attributed merely to duplicity of character and contempt for authority. He was doing only what he had learned to do at the military schools of Brienne and Paris, and what he saw practised about him in the army. Indeed, the whole French army at that period made a business of shirking duty. Every minister of war in the period complains of the incessant desertions among the common soldiers. Among the officers it was no better. True, they did not desert; they held their places and—did nothing. “Those who were rich and well born had no need to work,” says the Marshal Duc de Broglie. “They were promoted by favoritism. Those who were poor and from the provinces had no need to work either. It did them no good if they did, for, not having patronage, they could not advance.” The Comte de Saint-Germain said in regard to the officers: “There is not one who is in active service; they one and all amuse themselves and look out for their own affairs.” Napoleon, tormented by the desire to help his family, goaded by his ambition and by an imperative inborn need of action and achievement, still divided in his allegiance between France and Corsica, could not have been expected, in his environment, to take nothing more than the leaves allowed by law. Revolutionary agitation did not absorb all the time he was in Corsica. Never did he work harder for his family. The portion of this two and a half years which he spent in France, he was accompanied by Louis, whose tutor he had become, and he suffered every deprivation to help him. Napoleon’s income at that time was sixty-five cents a day. This meant that he must live in wretched rooms, prepare himself the broth on which he and his brother dined, never go to a _café_, brush his own clothes, give Louis lessons. He did it bravely. “I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted my door on my poverty,” he said once to a young officer complaining of the economies he must make on two hundred dollars a month. [Illustration: BONAPARTE AT THE TUILERIES, AUGUST 10, 1792.