In the club of the Friends of the Constitution, Robespierre thus addressed Paoli: "Ah! there was a time when we sought to crush freedom in its last retreats. Yet no! that was the crime of despotism--the French people have wiped away the stain. What ample atonement to conquered Corsica, and injured mankind! Noble citizens, you defended liberty at a time when I did not so much as venture to hope for it. You have suffered for liberty; you now triumph with it, and your triumph is ours. Let us unite to preserve it for ever, and may its base opponents turn pale with fear at the sight of our sacred league." Paoli had no foreboding of the position into which the course of events was yet to bring him, in relation to this same France, or that he was once more to stand opposed to her as a foe. He left for Corsica. In Marseilles he was again received by a Corsican deputation, with the members of which came the two young club-leaders of Ajaccio--Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte. Paoli wept as he landed on Cape Corso and kissed the soil of his native country; he was conducted in triumph from canton to canton; and the Te Deum was sung throughout the island. Paoli, as President of the Assembly, and Lieutenant-general of the Corsican National Guard, now devoted himself entirely to the affairs of his country; in the year 1791 he also undertook the command of the Division, and of the island. Although the French Revolution had silenced the special interests of the Corsicans, they began again to demand attention, and this was particularly felt by Paoli, among whose virtues patriotism was always uppermost. Paoli could never transform himself into a Frenchman, or forget that his people had possessed independence, and its own constitution. A coolness sprang up between him and certain parties in the island; the aristocratic French party, namely, on the one hand, composed of such men as Gaffori, Rossi, Peretti, and Buttafuoco; and the extreme democrats on the other, who saw the welfare of the world nowhere but in the whirl of the French Revolution, such as the Bonapartes, Saliceti, and Arenas. The execution of the king, and the wild and extravagant procedure of the popular leaders in Paris, shocked the philanthropic Paoli. He gradually broke with France, and the rupture became manifest after the unsuccessful French expedition from Corsica against Sardinia, the failure of which was attributed to Paoli. His opponents had lodged a formal accusation against him and Pozzo di Borgo, the Procurator-general, libelling them as Particularists, who wished to separate the island from France.