ng them to the Church; ambition, even low down on the scale,
has developed itself and changed its object. No longer do they aspire
for their sons to become a cure but a school master, a railroad
employee, or a commercial clerk.[5263] It was necessary to go descend
further, a lower stratum has to be attained, in order to extract from it
the priests that are lacking.

Undoubtedly, at this depth, the extraction was more expensive; the
family cannot afford to pay for the child's ecclesiastic cal education;
the State, moreover, after 1830, no longer gives anything to the lower
seminary, nor to the large one after 1885.[5264] The expenses of these
schools must be borne by the faithful in the shape of donations and
legacies; to this end, the bishop orders collections in the churches in
Lent and encourages his diocesans to found scholarships. The outlay for
the support and education, nearly gratis, of a future priest between
the ages of twelve and twenty-four is very great; in the lower seminary
alone it costs from forty to fifty thousand francs over and above the
net receipts;[5265] facing such an annual deficit, the bishop, who is
responsible for the undertaking, is greatly concerned and sometimes
extremely anxious. To make amends, and as compensation, the extraction
is surer; the long process by which a child is withdrawn and instructed
for the priesthood goes on and is finished with less uncertainty.
Neither the light nor the murmur of the century finds its way to these
low depths; nobody ever reads the newspaper, even the penny paper;
vocations can here shape themselves and become fixed like crystals,
intact and rigid, and all of a piece; they are better protected than in
the upper layers, less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less
risk of being disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism,
by modern ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as
elsewhere, interfere with their silent internal workings.[5266] When the
choir-boy comes home after the service, when the seminarian returns
to his parents in his vacations, he does not here en-counter so many
disintegrating influences, various kinds of information, free and easy
talk, comparisons between careers, concern about advancement, habits
of comfort, maternal solicitude, the shrugs of the shoulder and the
half-smile of the strong-minded neighbor. Stone upon stone and each
stone in its place, his faith builds up and becomes complete witho