of France and Spain saddened him. The Spanish law of universal education was a comedy, as we shall see. Two-thirds of the Spaniards could neither read nor write at the beginning of the twentieth century. Only a few million could both read and write. One-third of the population of Madrid were utterly illiterate. In such a soil corruption throve vigorously. The reflection, the contrast, burned into Ferrer's mind, and made education his constant day-dream. How was a young man of no fortune and no authority to educate a people, to fight the hostile influences of both Church and State? And suddenly an unexpected stroke of fortune put a powerful weapon in his hand, and he flew back to Spain to establish his now famous schools.
Among the many who admired the young teacher of the Philotechnic school and listened to his fervid ambitious was a wealthy Roman Catholic lady, Mlle. Meunier. She caught the glow of his enthusiasm, and, when she died at the end of the century, left him an estate in Paris worth some £30,000.
His relations with Mlle. Meunier have provided material for the anonymous writers who have thought fit to serve some cause or other by recklessly slandering the dead man. How some of their suggestions came to be printed passes understanding; but we may notice one Catholic untruth. A priest wrote in the Manchester Guardian that Ferrer had deceived this pious Roman Catholic lady, who believed he would employ her money in accord with her religious convictions. It is difficult to consider such puerilities seriously. Ferrer knew Mlle. Meunier for three years. He argued constantly against her religious beliefs. She knew him as an extreme Rationalist during the whole of that time, and she left the money to him, unreservedly, to be used as he thought fit. She thoroughly understood that he would use it in carrying out his new ideal. How educated men can, in such circumstances, suggest that she believed Ferrer, the notorious Agnostic and anti-clerical, would expend the money much as the priest would do is a problem I do not care to discuss. As the reader will guess, and as I was informed in Paris by those who knew her, Mlle. Meunier was really very unsound in dogma, not in judgment. Ferrer assured her that he would only accept the money as a trust for the foundation of secular
