It was only a few weeks before the ripening of cherries.

Did that cherry-idyll with Mdlle.

de Colombier lure him back to life?
Or did the hope of striking a blow for Corsica stay his suicidal hand?
Probably the latter; for we find him shortly afterwards tilting against a Protestant minister of Geneva who had ventured to criticise one of the dogmas of Rousseau's evangel.
The Genevan philosopher had asserted that Christianity, by enthroning in the hearts of Christians the idea of a Kingdom not of this world, broke the unity of civil society, because it detached the hearts of its converts from the State, as from all earthly things.

To this the Genevan minister had successfully replied by quoting Christian teachings on the subject at issue.

But Buonaparte fiercely accuses the pastor of neither having understood, nor even read, "Le Contrat Social": he hurls at his opponent texts of Scripture which enjoin obedience to the laws: he accuses Christianity of rendering men slaves to an anti-social tyranny, because its priests set up an authority in opposition to civil laws; and as for Protestantism, it propagated discords between its followers, and thereby violated civic unity.
Christianity, he argues, is a foe to civil government, for it aims at making men happy in this life by inspiring them with hope of a future life; while the aim of civil government is "to lend assistance to the feeble against the strong, and by this means to allow everyone to enjoy a sweet tranquillity, the road of happiness." He therefore concludes that Christianity and civil government are diametrically opposed.
In this tirade we see the youth's spirit of revolt flinging him not only against French law, but against the religion which sanctions it.
He sees none of the beauty of the Gospels which Rousseau had admitted.