The seminary Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet, situated by the side of the church of that name, between the Rue Saint Victor and the Rue de Pontoise, had since the Revolution been the petty seminary for the diocese of Paris.  This was not its primitive destination.  In the great movement of religious reform which occurred during the first half of the seventeenth century, and to which the names of Vincent de Paul, Olier, Berulle, and Father Eudes are attached, the church of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet filled, though in a humbler measure, the same part as Saint Sulpice.  The parish of Saint Nicholas, which derived its name from a field of thistles well known to students at the University of Paris in the middle ages, was then the centre of a very wealthy neighbourhood, the principal residents belonging to the magistracy.  As Olier founded the St. Sulpice Seminary, so Adrien de Bourdoise, founded the company of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet, and made this establishment a nursery for young priests which lasted until the Revolution.  It had not, however, like the Saint Sulpice establishment, a number of branch houses in other parts of France.  Moreover, the association was not revived after the Revolution like that of Saint Sulpice, and their building in the Rue Saint Victor was untenanted.  At the time of the Concordat it was given to the diocese of Paris, to be used as a petty seminary.  Up to 1837, this establishment did not make any sort of a name for itself.  The brilliant Renaissance of learned and worldly clericalism dates from the decade of 1830-40.  During the first third of the century, Saint Nicholas was an obscure religious establishment, the number of students being below the requirements of the diocese, and the level of study a very low one.  Abbe Frere, the head of the seminary, though a profound theologian and well versed in the mysticism of the Christian faith, was not in the least suited to rouse and stimulate lads who were engaged in literary study.  Saint Nicholas, under his headship, was a thoroughly ecclesiastical establishment, its comparatively few students having a clerical career in view, and the secular side of education was passed over entirely.

M. de Quelen was very well inspired when he entrusted the management of this college to M. Dupanloup.  The archbishop was not the man to approve of the strict clericalism of Abbe Frere.  He liked piety, but worldly and well-bred piety, without any scholastic barbarisms or mystic jargon, piety as a complement of the well-bred ideal which, to tell the truth, was his main faith.  If Hugues or Richard de Saint Victor had risen up before him in the shape of pedants or boors he would have set little store by them.  He was very much attached to M. Dupanloup, who was at that time Legitimist and Ultramontane.  It was only the exaggerations of a later day which so changed the parts that he came to be looked upon as a Gallican and an Orleanist.  M. de Quelen treated him as a spiritual son, sharing his dislikes and his prejudices.