plies to the objections and alarm of the
parents "that it is favorable to order, without which there are no good
studies," and moreover "it accustoms the pupils to carrying and using
arms, which shortens their work and accelerates their promotion on being
summoned by the conscription to the service of the State." The tap of
the drum, the attitude in presenting arms, marching at command, uniform,
gold lace, and all that, in 1811, becomes obligatory, not only for the
lycees and colleges, but again, and under the penalty of being closed,
for private institutions.[6164] At the end of the Empire, there were in
the departments which composed old France 76,000 scholars studying under
this system of stimulation and constraint. "Our masters," as a
former pupil is to say later on, "resembled captain-instructors, our
study-rooms mess--rooms, our recreations drills, and our examinations
reviews."[6165] The whole tendency of the school inclines it towards the
military and merges therein on the studies being completed--sometimes,
even, it flows into it before the term is over. After 1806,[6166] the
anticipated conscriptions take youths from the benches of the philosophy
and rhetoric classes. After 1808, ministerial circulars[6167] demand of
the lycees boys (des enfants de bonne volonte), scholars of eighteen and
nineteen who "know how to manoeuvre," so that they may at once be made
under-officers or second-lieutenants; and these the lycees furnish
without any difficulty by hundreds. In this way, the beardless volunteer
entering upon the career one or two years sooner, but gaining by this
one or two grades in rank.--"Thus," says a principal[6168] of one of the
colleges, "the brain of the French boy is full of the soldier. As far as
knowledge goes there is but little hope of it, at least under existing
circumstances. In the schools, says another witness of the reign,[6169]
"the young refuse to learn anything but mathematics and a knowledge of
arms. I can recall many examples of young lads of ten or twelve
years who daily entreated their father and mother to let them go with
Napoleon."--In those days, the military profession is evidently the
first of all, almost the only one. Every civilian is a pekin, that is
to say an inferior, and is treated as such.[6170] At the door of the
theatre, the officer breaks the line of those who are waiting to get
their tickets and, as a right, takes one under the nose of those who
came before him; they let