A year later (1803) Reggio went to Trieste, where for three years he was a tutor in the house of a wealthy family. There he made a friend of Mordecai Isaac de Cologna, at whose death (1824) Reggio wrote a funeral oration in Italian. He returned to Gorizia in 1807, where one year later he married the daughter of a wealthy man and settled down to a life of independent study. When the province of Illyria (1810) became a French dependency, Reggio was appointed by the French governor professor of "belles-lettres", geography, and history, and chancellor of the lycée of Gorizia. But three years later Illyria became again an Austrian province, and the Austrian anti-Jewish laws compelled Reggio to resign.