On Suicide - Napoleon Bonaparte

Valence, May 3rd 1786

Always alone in the midst of men, I return home to dream alone and abandon myself to all the intensity of my melancholy. Where did it lead today? Towards death.

At the dawn of my days I can still hope to live long. I have been absent from my fatherland for six or seven years. Which pleasures will I not feel in four months to see my compatriots and my parents! From the tender sensations which awaken the sweet memories of childhood, could I not conclude that my happiness will be complete?

What fury then leads me to want my destruction? No doubt, what to do in this world? If I must die, is it not better to kill myself? If I had already passed sixty years, I would respect the prejudice of my contemporaries and patiently wait for nature to achieve its course; but since I begin to feel misfortune, that nothing pleases me, why should I endure days in which nothing succeeds?

How far men are from nature! How cowardly, vile, and crawling they are! What spectacle will I see in my country? My compatriots heavy with chains, and who trembling kiss the hand which oppresses them! They are no longer these brave Corsicans which a hero animated of his virtues, enemy of tyrants, of the luxury of vile courtisans. Proud, full of the noble sentiment of his own importance, a Corsican lived happily if he had spent the day tending to public affairs. The night spent in the tender arms of a dear wife?

Reason and his enthusiasm erased all the troubles of the day. Tenderness, nature, rendered his nights comparable to that of the Gods. But, with freedom, those happy days vanished like dreams! Frenchmen, not content with having taken from us everything we cherished, you have also corrupted our mores.

The current condition of my fatherland and my powerlessness to change it, are thus yet another reason to flee a land where I am obligated by duty to praise men whom I ought by virtue to hate. When I will arrive in my fatherland, how must I act, which language should I hold?

When the fatherland is no more, a good patriot should die. If I had only one man to destroy to deliver my compatriots, I would leave this instant and plunge in the breast of the tyrants the vengeful sword of the fatherland and of violated laws.

Life is a burden to me because I taste no pleasure and everything is sorrow. It is a burden because the men with whom I live and will probably always live with have mores as far from mine as moonlight differs from that of the sun. I can therefore not follow the only manner of living which could make me endure life, from which follows disgust for everything.