Monti had been before invited to accept a professor's chair in the university of Pavia, which he had refused. In the month of February 1797, general Marmont was sent to Rome on occasion of the treaty of Tolentino, to carry letters from Bonaparte to the pope. Monti became acquainted with him; being then in a bad state of health, and advised to change the air of Rome for that of Tuscany, he accepted Marmont's invitation, who offered him a seat in his carriage, and proceeded to Florence. It may be imagined, that familiar intercourse with one of Napoleon's generals was the foundation of Monti's admiration for the French hero, and the cause of his opening his eyes to the good to be derived from adhering to the new order of things in his native country. At first he entertained the delusive hope that the blessing of liberty had really been conferred on Italy by the French arms, and that his countrymen would rise from chains and slavery to the enjoyment of national independence under national institutions; and yet the extravagant praise of Napoleon, which he indulges in, in all his poems written at this time, does not bear the marks of a sincere patriotism. Besides this, he had to struggle with many personal mortifications. The "Basvilliana" was not forgotten. French exactions and French assumptions had already alienated the minds of the noble born among the Italians. They feared the conqueror, but disdained the masquerade of liberty in which they were invited to play a part: thus the better classes shrunk from forming a part of the new governments, and the offices devolved upon men who had little to lose either in possessions or character. They regarded Monti with envy and aversion, and, instead of receiving him as a convert with open arms, his superior claims as a man of talent caused them to persecute him as an interloper and almost as a spy. The heads of the government, indeed, at first favoured him: he was invited to Milan, and elected central secretary of foreign affairs; but he was soon disturbed by persecutions. "My arrival," he writes several years afterwards, "was hailed by the usual abuse of the republican journals, who censured the directory for employing an enemy of the republic. I loved liberty; but the object of my love was the freedom described in the writings of Cicero and Plutarch: that which was adored on the altars of Milan appeared to me a prostitute, and I refused to worship her. Hence my excommunication,--hence the public burning of the 'Basvilliana.' On this I was obliged to prostrate myself before the idol. I sang her virtues, and became a revolutionary poet: I grew insane with the rest, and my conversion procured me patronage and grace."