when he wrote the history of his native land in French, in the thirteenth century, justified himself with the statement: "Because the French language has spread all over the world, is least difficult to read, and most pleasant to listen to."[1] The nobles at Versailles learn to be clever merely in order to amuse themselves and their guests. "The taste of the court must be studied. There is no other place in which natural tact and association with the world may be better learned. Here the mind may be trained to far greater acuteness than under any pedants and one may learn to judge things neatly and correctly," says Molière.
The sons of men of affairs learn quite differently, particularly those whose fathers constitute the upper stratum of the state, filling the parliaments and the bureaus, who buy anything, earn everything, own much and talk rebelliously. These young men work as diligently as if they were already certain that they are destined later to guide the state in the stormy days of the Republic, in the glorious era of Napoleon, and in the narrow-minded period of the Restoration.
The Lycée Louis-le-Grand was a model school. The instruction was given by Jesuits and the reader must not think that the pupils of Don Iñigo Lopez de Recalde of the Castle of Loyola did nothing but
- ↑ Charles Auguste Sainte-Beuve: Causeries du Lundi (1851–1857).
