ived."

Thus we see in the young soldier the same recluse and dreamer of
Brienne. In boyhood parlance today, he "flocked by himself," building
air castles which in part were to become reality.

As for his early attempts at authorship, he tried his hand with
indifferent success at fiction, essays, and history, but it is said
that he destroyed all this work, with the exception of a fragment,
"Letters on the History of Corsica," which was to have told the story
of his beloved island.

He returned home on a visit not long after, to help his mother settle
up the family estate. Her means were very meagre, and her family
unusually large. In addition, his father's affairs had become
involved. He had been advanced some money by the French Government to
plant mulberry trees, in connection with the silk-worm industry, and a
part of this advance was as yet unpaid.

On the score of ill health Napoleon prolonged his stay at Ajaccio for
some months, and did not rejoin his regiment until the spring of 1788.
He stayed on the island to aid the family from his own pay, and to get
a further advance on the mulberry grove; and also as a means of getting
away from other people. He was a pronounced recluse, indulging in long
rambles over the island, and finding his sole pleasure in authorship.
Upon the very threshold of his public career, he still appeared as the
most unlikely object upon which Fortune would bestow her favor.

And as if there were not barriers enough to his success, he was still
an alien in heart, from France. He wore her uniform and served under
her flag, but he was Corsican through and through--still resenting with
a Southern impetuosity the means by which the French had conquered
Corsica.

But unknown to him and many a wiser head, the hour of destiny was at
hand. The dark days of the French Revolution were rapidly approaching,
when it seemed as if the whole world would be engulfed in disaster.
With the fateful year of 1789, the hour struck--and Napoleon was then
just twenty years of age.

On the first echoes of Revolution which reached Corsica, Napoleon was
on the alert. He thought he saw a golden opportunity to throw off the
shackles of the conqueror. But one of the first acts of the National
Assembly was to recognize the full rights of the island as a part of
the State of France; and Napoleon, who had already made an attempt to
organize a sort of Home Guard, felt himself disarmed.

"France has opened he