"It is so," he replied. "Can we, then, never work out your Corsican brutality?" said the teacher. "Go, sir! you are to be imprisoned until fitting sentence for your crime can be considered." And once again poor Napoleon went into the school lock-up, while Bouquet, who was the most at fault, went free. There was almost a rebellion in school over the imprisonment of the successful general who had so bravely fought the battles of the snow-fort. Napoleon passed a day in the lock-up; then he was again summoned before the teacher who had thus punished him. "You are an incorrigible, young Bonaparte," said the teacher. "Imprisonment can never cure you. Through it, too, you go free from your studies and tasks. I have considered the proper punishment. It is this: you are to put on to-day the penitent's woollen gown; you are to kneel during dinner-time at the door of the dining-room, where all may see your disgrace and take warning therefrom; you are to eat your dinner on your knees. Thereafter, in presence of your schoolmates assembled in the dining-room, you are to apologize to Mr. Bouquet, and ask pardon from me, as representing the school, for thus breaking the laws and acting as a bully and a murderer. Go, sir, to your room, and assume the penitent's gown." Napoleon, as I have told you, was a high-spirited boy, and keenly felt disgrace. This sentence was as humiliating and mortifying as anything that could be put upon him. Rebel at it as he might, he knew that he would be forced to do it; and, distressed beyond measure at thought of what he must go through, he sought his room, and flung himself on his bed in an agony of tears. He actually had what in these days we call a fit of hysterics. While thus "broken up," his room door opened. Supposing that the teacher, or one of the monitors, had come to prepare him for the dreadful sentence, he refused to move. Then a voice, that certainly was not the one he expected, called to him. He raised a flushed and tearful face from the bed, and met the inquiring eyes of his father's old friend, and the "protector" of the Bonaparte family, General Marbeuf, formerly the French commander in Corsica. "Why, Napoleon, boy! what does all this mean?" inquired the general. "Have you been in mischief? What is the trouble?" The visit came as a climax to a most exciting event. In it Napoleon saw escape from the disgrace he so feared, and the injustice against which he so rebelled. With a joyful shout he flung himself impulsively at his friend's feet, clasped his knees, and begged for his protection. The boy, you see, was still unnerved and over-wrought, and was not as cool or self-possessed as usual. Gradually, however, he calmed down, and told General Marbeuf the whole story. The general was indignant at the sentence. But he laughed heartily at the idea of this fourteen-year-old boy challenging another to a duel.