he laughed at them; and when they attempted
to enter the garden by force, he fell upon them, drove them flying from
the field, and pommelled them so soundly that they judged discretion to
be the better part of valor, and made no further attempt to disturb the
conqueror.

The other boys did attempt it, however, simply to tease and annoy the
fiery Corsican. But it always resulted in their own damage; for Napoleon
become so attached to his garden citadel, that he would grow furiously
angry whenever he was disturbed. Rushing out, he would rout his
assailants completely; until at last it was understood that it was
safest to let him alone.

As he sought his garden on this day of disgrace to which I have
referred, he was full of bitter thoughts against the unfriendly boys and
the unsympathetic teachers amid whom his lot was cast. Like most boys,
he determined to do something that should free him from this tyranny;
then, like many boys, he decided to run away. Where or how he could go
he did not know; for he had no friends in France who would help him
along, and he had no money in his pocket to enable him to help himself.

"I will run away to sea," he said. For the sea, you know, is the first
thought of boys who determine to be runaways.

But Napoleon had a strong love for his family; he held high notions
in regard to the honor of the family name; above all else, he was
determined to do something that should help his family out of its sore
straits, and become one element of its support.

"If I should run away to sea," he thought, "I should bring discredit and
shame to my family: I should annoy my father, and seriously interfere
with my own plans. For, should I run away from Brienne, my father, who
has been at such pains to place me here, would be distressed, and
perhaps injured. No; I will brave it out. But I will write to my father,
asking him to take me away, and place me in some school where I shall
feel less like an outcast, where poverty would not be held as a crime,
and where I shall have more agreeable surroundings. So he went into his
garden fortress; he stretched himself at full length on his bench, and,
using the cover of his favorite book, Plutarch's "Lives," as a desk, he
wrote this letter to his father:--

[Illustration: _Napoleon writing to his father_.]

"MY FATHER,--If you or my protectors cannot give me the means of
sustaining myself more honorably in the house where I am, please summon
me home, and as