He doubtless knew the secret of his birth.  The families which had looked after the young priest, had made him a man of breeding, and admitted him into their exclusive coterie, were those with which the archbishop was intimate, and which formed in his eyes the limits of the universe.  I remember seeing M. de Quelen, and he was quite the type of the ideal bishop under the old regime.  I remember his feminine beauty, his perfect figure, and the easy grace of all his movements.  His mind had received no other cultivation than that of a well-educated man of the world.  Religion in his eyes was inseparable from good breeding and the modicum of common sense which a classical education is apt to give.

This was about the level of M. Dupanloup’s intellect.  He had neither the brilliant imagination which will give a lasting value to certain of Lacordaire’s and Montalembert’s works, nor the profound passion of Lamennais.  In the case of the archbishop and M. Dupanloup, good breeding and polish were the main thing, and the approval of those who stood high in the world was the touchstone of merit.  They knew nothing of theology, which they had studied but little, and for which they thought it enough to express platonic reverence.  Their faith was very keen and sincere, but it was a faith which took everything for granted, and which did not busy itself with the dogmas which must be accepted.  They knew that scholasticism would not go down with the only public for which they cared—­the worldly and somewhat frivolous congregations which sit beneath the preachers at St. Roch or St. Thomas Aquinas.

Such were the views entertained by M. de Quelen when he made over to M. Dupanloup the austere and little known establishment of Abbe Frere and Adrien de Bourdoise.  The petty seminary of Paris had hitherto, by virtue of the Concordat, been merely a training school for the clergy of Paris, quite sufficient for its purpose, but strictly confined to the object prescribed by the law.  The new superior chosen by the archbishop had far higher aims.  He set to work to re-construct the whole fabric, from the buildings themselves, of which only the old walls were left standing, to the course of teaching, which he re-cast entirely.  There were two essential points which he kept before him.  In the first place he saw that a petty seminary which was altogether ecclesiastical could not answer in Paris, and would never suffice to recruit a sufficient number of priests for the diocese.  He accordingly utilised the information which reached him, especially from the west of France and from his native Savoy, to bring to the college any youths of promise whom he might hear of.  Secondly, he determined that the college should become a model place of education instead of being a strict seminary with all the asceticism of a place in which the clerical element was unalloyed.  He hoped to let the same course of education serve for the young men studying for the priesthood, and