Meanwhile Napoleon began for the first time to enjoy games, even though his playfellows were only his little brothers and sisters. Paoletta, or, as he called her, Paulette, was very pretty, with little coaxing ways, strange indeed to find in Corsica, and when he was not talking seriously with Joseph of the disturbed state of the island, he was generally to be seen with Paulette on one side and Louis on the other. For from the first he was very fond of Louis, and all the time he was at home he taught him regularly part of every day. He had some books with him that he bought by denying himself things that most young men would have thought necessaries. Among them were mathematical treatises, Corneille's and Racine's plays, which told stories of old Rome and her heroes, the Gallic wars of Cæsar, translated, of course, or Napoleon could not have read it, and Rousseau's 'Social Contract'; but Louis was as yet too young for that, being only eight. In his spare moments Napoleon studied politics and made notes about the history of Corsica, hoping some day to make them into a book, and chattered French to the little ones, who picked it up much more easily than their teacher had done. It seems strange that he should have been allowed to remain at home for nearly two years, but in France events were rapidly marching towards the Revolution, and rules were in many cases relaxed. Anyhow, it was not till June 1788 that he returned to his regiment, then quartered at Auxonne. His superior officers, especially Baron du Teil, all interested themselves in the young man for whom no work was too hard as long as it bore on military subjects, and encouraged him in every possible way. His men liked him, and felt the same confidence in him that his mother had done; but from his own comrades he still held aloof, and the walks that he took round the city, pondering how best it could be attacked or defended, were always solitary ones. In general he was left pretty much alone—there was a feeling among them that he was not a safe person to meddle with; but sometimes their high spirits got the better of them, and when he was trying to puzzle out a problem in mathematics that had baffled him for days, his thoughts would be put to flight by a sudden blast of trumpets and roar of drums directly under his window. Then Napoleon would spring up with a fierce burst of anger, but before he could get outside the culprits were nowhere to be seen.