Mlle. Meunier, a pupil of Francisco Ferrer, and a lady of wealth,
became interested in the Modern School project. When she died, she
left Ferrer some valuable property and twelve thousand francs yearly
income for the School.

It is said that mean souls can conceive of naught but mean ideas.
If so, the contemptible methods of the Catholic Church to blackguard
Ferrer's character, in order to justify her own black crime, can
readily be explained. Thus the lie was spread in American Catholic
papers, that Ferrer used his intimacy with Mlle. Meunier to get
possession of her money.

Personally, I hold that the intimacy, of whatever nature, between a
man and a woman, is their own affair, their sacred own. I would
therefore not lose a word in referring to the matter, if it were not
one of the many dastardly lies circulated about Ferrer. Of course,
those who know the purity of the Catholic clergy will understand the
insinuation. Have the Catholic priests ever looked upon woman as
anything but a sex commodity? The historical data regarding the
discoveries in the cloisters and monasteries will bear me out in
that. How, then, are they to understand the co-operation of a man
and a woman, except on a sex basis?

As a matter of fact, Mlle. Meunier was considerably Ferrer's senior.
Having spent her childhood and girlhood with a miserly father and a
submissive mother, she could easily appreciate the necessity of love
and joy in child life. She must have seen that Francisco Ferrer was
a teacher, not college, machine, or diploma-made, but one endowed
with genius for that calling.

Equipped with knowledge, with experience, and with the necessary
means; above all, imbued with the divine fire of his mission, our
Comrade came back to Spain, and there began his life's work. On the
ninth of September, 1901, the first Modern School was opened. It was
enthusiastically received by the people of Barcelona, who pledged
their support. In a short address at the opening of the School,
Ferrer submitted his program to his friends. He said: "I am not a
speaker, not a propagandist, not a fighter. I am a teacher; I love
children above everything. I think I understand them. I want my
contribution to the cause of liberty to be a young generation ready
to meet a new era."

He was cautioned by his friends to be careful in his opposition to
the Catholic Church. They knew to what lengths she would go to
dispose of an enemy. Ferrer, too, k