Great
Mogul," and the "Shepherds in Chains"; the seminarians took great care
of their hair; a first-class hair-dresser came and waited on them; the
doors were not regularly shut: the youthful Talleyrand knew how to get
out into the city and begin or continue his gallantries.[5272] From
and after the Concordat, stricter discipline in the new seminaries had
become monastic; these are practical schools, not for knowledge, but for
training, the object being much less to make learned men than believing
priests; education takes precedence of instruction and intellectual
exercises are made subordinate to spiritual exercises[5273]--mass every
day and five visits to the Saint-Sacrament, with one minute to half-hour
prayer stations; rosaries of sixty-three paters and aves, litanies,
the angelus, loud and whispered prayers, special self-examinations,
meditation on the knees, edifying readings in common, silence until
one o'clock in the afternoon, silence at meals and the listening to an
edifying discourse, frequent communions, weekly confessions, general
confession at New-year's, one day of retreat at the end of every month
after the vacations and before the collation of each of the four orders,
eight days of retirement during which a suspension of all study, morning
and evening sermons, spiritual readings, meditations, orisons and other
services from hour to hour;[5274] in short, the daily and systematic
application of a wise and steadily perfected method, the most
serviceable for fortifying faith, exalting the imagination, giving
direction and impulse to the will, analogous to that of a military
school, Saint-Cyr or Saumur, to such an extent that its corporeal and
mental imprint is indelible, and that by the way in which he thinks,
talks, smiles, bows and stands in your presence we at once recognize a
former pupil of Saint-Sulpice as we do a former pupil of Saumur and of
Saint-Cyr. Thus graduated, an ordained and consecrated priest, first
a vicar and then a cure desservant, the discipline which has bound and
fashioned him still keeps him erect and presenting arms. Besides his
duties in church and his ministrations in the homes of his parishioners,
besides masses, vespers, sermons, catechisings, confessions, communions,
baptisms, marriages, extreme unctions, funerals, visiting the sick and
suffering, he has his personal and private exercises: at first, his
breviary, the reading of which demands each day an hour and a half, no
pra