for the sons of the highest families in France.  His success in the Rue Saint Florentin (this was where Talleyrand died) had made him a favourite with the Legitimists, and he had several useful friends among the Orleanists.  Well posted in all the fashionable changes, and neglecting no opportunity for pushing himself, he was always quick to adapt himself to the spirit of the time.  His theory of what the world should be was a very aristocratic one, but he maintained that there were three orders of aristocracy:  the nobility, the clergy, and literature.  What he wished to insure was a liberal education, which would be equally suitable for the clergy and for the youths of the Faubourg Saint Germain, based upon Christian piety and classical literature.  The study of science was almost entirely excluded, and he himself had not even a smattering of it.

Thus the old house in the Rue Saint Victor was for many years the rendezvous of youths bearing the most famous of French names, and it was considered a very great favour for a young man to obtain admission.  The large sums which many rich people paid to secure admission for their sons served to provide a free education for young men without fortune who had shown signs of talent.  This testified to the unbounded faith of M. Dupanloup in classical learning.  He looked upon these classical studies as part and parcel of religion.  He held that youths destined for holy orders and those who were in afterlife to occupy the highest social positions should both receive the same education.  Virgil, he thought should be as much a part of a priest’s intellectual training as the Bible.  He hoped that the elite of his theological students would, by their association upon equal terms with young men of good family, acquire more polish and a higher social tone than can be obtained in seminaries peopled by peasants’ sons.  He was wonderfully successful in this respect.  The college, though consisting of two elements, apparently incongruous, was remarkable for its unity.  The knowledge that talent overrode all other considerations prevented anything like jealousy, and by the end of a week the poorest youth from the provinces, awkward and simple as he might be, was envied by the young millionaire—­who, little as he might know it, was paying for his schooling—­if he had turned out some good Latin verses, or written a clever exercise.

In the year 1838, I was fortunate enough to win all the prizes in my class at the Treguier College.  The palmares happened to be seen by one of the enlightened men whom M. Dupanloup employed to recruit his youthful army.  My fate was settled in a twinkling, and “Have him sent for” was the order of the impulsive Superior.  I was fifteen and a half years old, and we had no time to reflect.  I was spending the holidays with a friend in a village near Treguier, and in the afternoon of the 4th of September I was sent for in haste.  I remember my returning home as well as if it was only yesterday.  We had a league to travel through the country.  The vesper bell with its soft cadence echoing from steeple to steeple awoke a sensation of gentle melancholy, the image of the life which I was about to abandon for ever.  The next day I started for Paris; upon the 7th I beheld sights which were as novel for me as if I had been suddenly landed in France from Tahiti or Timbuctoo.