The letter in which the boy communicates his decision to his father is as remarkable as the one just mentioned and very clearly the sequel to it. The anxious and industrious parent had finally broken down, and in his feeble health had taken Joseph as a support and help on the arduous homeward journey. With the same succinct, unsparing statement as before, Napoleon confesses his disappointment, and in commanding phrase, with logical analysis, lays down the reasons why Joseph must come to Brienne instead of going to Metz. There is, however, a new element in the composition--a frank, hearty expression of affection for his family, and a message of kindly remembrance to his friends. But the most striking fact, in view of subsequent developments, is a request for Boswell's "History of Corsica," and any other histories or memoirs relating to "that kingdom." "I will bring them back when I return, if it be six years from now."[5] The immediate sequel makes clear the direction of his mind. He probably did not remember that he was preparing, if possible, to strip France of her latest and highly cherished acquisition at her own cost, or if he did, he must have felt like the archer pluming his arrow from the off-cast feathers of his victim's wing. It is plain that his humiliations at school, his studies in the story of liberty, his inherited bent, and the present disappointment, were all cumulative in the result of fixing his attention on his native land as the destined sphere of his activity. [Footnote 5: This letter, which is without date, is printed in Coston, as taken from the newspapers; again in a revised form in Nasica: Mémoires sur l'enfance et la jeunesse de Napoléon, p. 71, who claimed to have collated it with the original; and again in Jung: Bonaparte et son temps, who gives as his reference, Archives de la guerre, preserving exactly the form given by Nasica. The Napoleon papers of the War Department were freely, and I believe entirely, put into my hands for examination. This letter was not among them; in fact, my efforts to confirm the references of Jung were sadly ineffectual.]