table
administrators; he stops, here as everywhere else, waste and peculation.
Henceforth, the public reservoir to which the poor come to quench their
thirst is repaired and cleaned; the water remains pure and no longer
oozes out; private charity may therefore pour into it its fresh streams
with full security; on this side, they flow in naturally, and, at this
moment, with more force than usual, for, in the reservoir, half-emptied
by revolutionary confiscations, the level is always low.

There remain the institutions for instruction. With respect to these,
the restoration seems more difficult, for their ancient endowment is
almost entirely wasted; the government has nothing to give back but
dilapidated buildings, a few scattered investments formerly intended
for the maintenance of a college scholarship,[31124] or for a village
schoolhouse. And to whom should these be returned since the college and
the schoolhouse no longer exist?--Fortunately, instruction is an article
of such necessity that a father almost always tries to procure it for
his children; even if poor, he is willing to pay for it, if not too
dear; only, he wants that which pleases him in kind and in quality and,
therefore, from a particular source, bearing this or that factory stamp
or label. If you want him to buy it do not drive the purveyors of it
from the market who enjoy his confidence and who sell it cheaply; on the
contrary, welcome them and allow them to display their wares. This is
the first step, an act of toleration; the conseils-generaux demand
it and the government yields.[31125] It permits the return of the
Ignorantin brethren, allows them to teach and authorizes the towns to
employ them; later on, it graduates them at its University: in 1810,
they already possess 41 schoolhouses and 8400 pupils.[31126] Still more
liberally, it authorizes and favors female educational congregations;
down to the end of the empire and afterwards, nuns are about the only
instructors of young girls, especially in primary education.--Owing to
the same toleration, the upper schools are likewise reorganized, and
not less spontaneously, through the initiative of private individuals,
communes, bishops, colleges or pensionnats, at Reims, Fontainebleau,
Metz, Evreux, Sorreze, Juilly, La Fleche and elsewhere small seminaries
in all the dioceses. Offer and demand have come together; instructors
meet the children half-way, and education begins on all sides.[31127]

Thought