He obtains permission to escort home his sister Elise, and for the third time we find him on furlough in Corsica.

This laxity of military discipline at such a crisis is explicable only on the supposition that the revolutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to their cause and believed that his influence in the island would render his informal services there more valuable than his regimental duties in the army then invading Savoy.

For the word Republic, which fired his imagination, was an offence to Paoli and to most of the islanders; and the phrase "Republic one and indivisible," ever on the lips of the French, seemed to promise that the island must become a petty replica of France--France that was now dominated by the authors of the vile September massacres.

The French party in the island was therefore rapidly declining, and Paoli was preparing to sever the union with France.

For this he has been bitterly assailed as a traitor.