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 soon as possible. I am tired of poverty, and of the
smiles of the insolent scholars who are superior to me only in their
fortune; for there is not one among them who feels one-hundredth part
of the noble sentiments by which I am animated. Must your son, sir,
continually be the butt of these boobies, who, vain of the luxuries
which they enjoy, insult me with their laughter at the privations I am
forced to endure? No, father; No! If fortune refuses to smile upon me,
take me from Brienne, and make me, if you will, a mechanic. From these
words you may judge of my despair. This letter, sir, please believe, is
not dictated by a vain desire to enjoy expensive amusements. I have no
such wish. I feel simply that it is necessary to show my companions that
I can procure them as well as they, if I wish to do so.