Only those who knew Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet during the brilliant period from 1838 to 1844 can form an adequate idea of the intense life which prevailed there.[1] And this life had only one source, one principle:  M. Dupanloup himself.  The whole work fell on his shoulders.  Regulations, usage administration, the spiritual and temporal government of the college, were all centred in him.  The college was full of defects, but he made up for them all.  As a writer and an orator he was only second-rate, but as an educator of youth he had no equal.  The old rules of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet provided, as in all other seminaries, that half an hour should be devoted every evening to what was known as spiritual reading.  Before M. Dupanloup’s time, the readings were from some ascetic book such as the Lives of the Fathers in the Desert, but he took this half hour for himself, and every evening he put himself into direct communication with all his pupils by the medium of a familiar conversation, which was so natural and unrestrained that it might often have borne comparison with the homilies of John Chrysostom in the Palaea of Antioch.  Any incident in the inner life of the college, any occurrence directly concerning himself or one of the pupils furnished the theme for a brief and lively soliloquy.  The reading of the reports on Friday was still more dramatic and personal, and we all anticipated that day with a mixture of hope and apprehension.  The observations with which he interlarded the reading of the notes were charged with life and death.  There was no mode of punishment in force; the reading of the notes and the reflections which he made upon them being the sole means which he employed to keep us all on the qui vive.  This system, doubtless, had its drawbacks.  Worshipped by his pupils, M. Dupanloup was not always liked by his fellow-workers.  I have been told that it was the same in his diocese, and that he was always a greater favourite with his laymen than with his priests.  There can be no doubt that he put every one about him into the background.  But his very violence made us like him, for we felt that all his thoughts were concentrated on us.  He was without an equal in the art of rousing his pupils to exertion, and of getting the maximum amount of work out of each.  Each pupil had a distinct existence in his mind, and for each one of them he was an ever-present stimulus to work.  He set great store by talent, and treated it as the groundwork of faith.  He often said that a man’s worth must be measured by his faculty for admiration.  His own admiration was not always very enlightened or scientific, but it was prompted by a generous spirit, and a heart really glowing with the love of the beautiful.  He was the Villemain of the Catholic school, and M. Villemain was the friend whom he loved and appreciated the most among laymen.  Every time he had seen him, he related the conversation which they had together in terms of the warmest sympathy.