"Since, however, I now discover that you have been complaining that I kept silence about my intentions, I feel myself constrained, as a dutiful citizen, to announce to you, as one friendly neighbour is in the habit of doing to another, that I have changed my residence. I must therefore take the liberty to observe that I—disgusted with the long and many wanderings which, as you are aware, have occupied my past life—have at last come to the conclusion to select for myself a little place in Corsica; and since this place happens to lie in your vicinity, I take the liberty now to pay you in writing my first visit of ceremony. Your present delegate at Bastia, if he does not deceive you like his predecessor, will be able to assure you of my particular exertions to send to the said town an adequate number of troops in order to pay my respects to you in a way which may give the fullest publicity to our new neighbourhood. "Inasmuch as, however, the departure of one neighbour from another often gives rise to criticism, or it may be even disputes, on account of the difficulty of settling boundary lines, I will refrain from further compliments and immediately talk with you about our concerns; and I do so all the more willingly that I have heard from various quarters that our new neighbourhood is very disagreeable to you, that you bitterly inveigh against it, and, indeed, in defiance of every law of etiquette, entirely repudiate it. The declaration made by you that your neighbour is a disturber of the common peace, and a seducer of the people, is a most barefaced lie, promulgated as the truth not only in one or two places, but in the face of the whole world, although everybody knows that peace and quiet have been these seven years entirely banished out of Corsica, and that you yourselves were the first to disturb them by your tyrannous and unjust rule, and then by your cruelty to extinguish them entirely. The state-maxims according to which you have acted have, under the pretence of promoting peace, bathed the poor Corsicans in a sea of blood. "This has been your conduct, and in this way have you chased peace and quiet out of Corsica after it had been with such great difficulty restored by the Emperor. Your wicked and stubborn Pinelli misled the people, and such is the condition in which I find it after having lived here for only a few days. Why is the guilt of your crimes rolled over upon me? In what law is it written that so simple and innocent a neighbour as I am can be guilty of high treason? Treason supposes a friendship broken by the lowest crimes, and those crimes perpetrated under the pretext of friendship. Grant that you were by me grievously injured, what friendship has ever existed between us two? when was I your friend? Heaven prevent me from sinking so low as to be the friend of a nation which has so few friends!