the noncommissioned officers and drill-sergeants, and it would have been absurd to expect from them the high breeding of general officers.  The company exercised through its numerous provincial houses a decisive influence upon the education of the French clergy, while in Canada it acquired a sort of religious suzerainty which harmonised very well with the English rule—­so well-disposed towards ancient rights and custom, and which has lasted down to our own day.

The Revolution did not have any effect upon St. Sulpice.  A man of cool and resolute character, such as the company always numbered among its members, reconstructed it upon the very same basis.  M. Emery, a very learned and moderately Gallican priest, so completely gained Napoleon’s confidence that be obtained from him the necessary authorisations.  He would have been very much surprised if he had been told that the fact of making such a demand was a base concession to the civil power, and a sort of impiety.  Thus things recurred to their old groove as they were before the Revolution, the door moved on its old hinges, and as from Olier to the Revolution there had not been any change, the seventeenth century had still a resting-place in one corner of Paris.

St. Sulpice continued amid surroundings so different, to be what it had always been before—­moderate and respectful towards the civil power, and to hold aloof from politics.[1] With its legal status thoroughly assured, thanks to the judicious measures taken by M. Emery, St. Sulpice was blind to all that went on in the world outside.  After the Revolution of 1830, there was some little stir in the college.  The echo of the heated discussions of the day sometimes pierced its walls, and the speeches of M. Mauguin—­I am sure I don’t know why—­were special favourites with the junior students.  One of them took an opportunity of reading to the superior, M. Duclaux, an extract from a debate which had struck him as being more violent than usual.  The old priest, wrapped up in his own reflections, had scarcely listened.  When the student had finished, he awoke from his lethargy, and shaking him by the hand, observed:  “It is very clear, my lad, that these men do not say their orisons.”  The remark has often recalled itself to me of late in connection with certain speeches.  What a light is let in upon many points by the fact that M. Clemenceau does not probably say his orisons!

These imperturbable old men were very indifferent to what went on in the world, which to their mind was a barrel-organ continually repeating the same tune.  Upon one occasion there was a good deal of commotion upon the Place St. Sulpice, and one of the professors, whose feelings were not so well under control as those of his colleagues, wanted them all “to go to the chapel and die in a body.”  “I don’t see the use of that,” was the reply of one of his colleagues, and the professors continued their constitutional walk under the colonnade of the courtyard.