officiating in thirty colleges. Not subject to the expenses and
necessities which a family imposes, they were abstemious through
piety, or at least through discipline, habit, and respect for persons;
frequently, the statutes of the school obliged them to live in
common,[3160] which was much cheaper than living apart.--The same
economical accord is found with all the wheels, in the arrangement and
working of the entire system. A family, even a rural one, never lived
far away from a high-school, for there were high-schools in nearly all
the small towns, seven or eight in each department, fifteen in Ain,
seventeen in Aisne.[3161] The child or youth, from eight to eighteen,
had not to endure the solitude and promiscuity of a civil barracks; he
remained within reach of his parents. If they were too poor to pay the
three hundred francs board required by the school, they placed their son
in a respectable family, in that of some artisan or acquaintance in the
town; there, with three or four others, he was lodged, had his washing
done, was cared for and watched, had a seat at the family table and by
the fireside, and was provided with light; every week, he received from
the country his supply of bread and other provisions; the mistress of
the house cooked for him and mended his clothes, the whole for two or
three livres a month.[3162]--Thus do institutions flourish that arise
spontaneously on the spot; they adapt themselves to circumstances,
conform to necessities, utilize resources and afford the maximum of
returns for the minimum of expense.

This great organization disappears entirely, bodily and with all its
possessions, like a ship that sinks beneath the waves. The teachers
are dismissed, exiled, transported, and proscribed; its property is
confiscated, sold and destroyed, and the remainder in the hands of the
State is not restored and again applied to its former service. Public
education, worse treated than public charity, does not recover a
shred of its former endowment. Consequently, in the last years of the
Directory, and even early in the Consulate,[3163] there is scarcely any
instruction given in France; in fact, for the past eight or nine years
it has ceased,[3164] or become private and clandestine. Here and there,
a few returned priests, in spite of the intolerant law and with the
connivance of the local authorities, also a few scattered nuns, teach
in a contraband fashion a few small groups of Catholic children; fi