of
inherent improbability, since pocket money was by rule
almost unknown in the royal colleges, and Corsican
homesickness is as common as that of the Swiss. But
rules prove nothing and the letters seem inherently
genuine.]

Nor was this, if true, the only light among the shadows in the picture
of his later Brienne school-days. Each of the hundred and fifty pupils
had a small garden spot assigned to him. Buonaparte developed a
passion for his own, and, annexing by force the neglected plots of
his two neighbors, created for himself a retreat, the solitude of
which was insured by a thick and lofty hedge planted about it. To this
citadel, the sanctity of which he protected with a fury at times half
insane, he was wont to retire in the fair weather of all seasons, with
whatever books he could procure. In the companionship of these he
passed happy, pleasant, and fruitful hours. His youthful patriotism
had been intensified by the hatred he now felt for French school-boys,
and through them for France. "I can never forgive my father," he once
cried, "for the share he had in uniting Corsica to France." Paoli
became his hero, and the favorite subjects of his reading were the
mighty deeds of men and peoples, especially in antiquity. Such matter
he found abundant in Plutarch's "Lives."

Moreover, his punishments and degradation by the school authorities at
once created a sentiment in his favor among his companions, which not
only counteracted the effect of official penalties, but gave him a
sort of compensating leadership in their games. When driven by storms
to abandon his garden haunt, and to associate in the public hall with
the other boys, he often instituted sports in which opposing camps of
Greeks and Persians, or of Romans and Carthaginians, fought until the
uproar brought down the authorities to end the conflict. On one
occasion he proposed the game, common enough elsewhere, but not so
familiar then in France, of building snow forts, of storming and
defending them, and of fighting with snowballs as weapons. The
proposition was accepted, and the preparations were made under his
direction with scientific zeal; the intrenchments, forts, bastions,
and redoubts were the admiration of the neighborhood. For weeks the
mimic warfare went on, Buonaparte, always in command, being sometimes
the besieger and as often the besieged. Such was the aptitude, such
the res