his father protesting against the “judgments of the vulgar, who, contrary to the experience of ages, say that if children are well reproved they will correct their faults.”  Dumas, however, was not without sense, as is shown by another letter to the elder Montcalm, in which he says that the boy had better be ignorant of Latin and Greek “than know them as he does without knowing how to read, write, and speak French well.”  The main difficulty was to make him write a good hand,—­a point in which he signally failed to the day of his death.  So refractory was he at times, that his master despaired.  “M. de Montcalm,” Dumas informs the father, “has great need of docility, industry, and willingness to take advice.  What will become of him?” The pupil, aware of these aspersions, met them by writing to his father his own ideas of what his aims should be.  “First, to be an honorable man, of good morals, brave, and a Christian.  Secondly, to read in moderation; to know as much Greek and Latin as most men of the world; also the four rules of arithmetic, and something of history, geography, and French and Latin belles-lettres, as well as to have a taste for the arts and sciences.  Thirdly, and above all, to be obedient, docile, and very submissive to your orders and those of my dear mother; and also to defer to the advice of M. Dumas.  Fourthly, to fence and ride as well as my small abilities will permit."[361]

[Footnote 361:  This passage is given by Somervogel from the original letter.]

If Louis de Montcalm failed to satisfy his preceptor, he had a brother who made ample amends.  Of this infant prodigy it is related that at six years he knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and had some acquaintance with arithmetic, French history, geography, and heraldry.  He was destined for the Church, but died at the age of seven; his precocious brain having been urged to fatal activity by the exertions of Dumas.

Other destinies and a more wholesome growth were the lot of young Louis.  At fifteen he joined the army as ensign in the regiment of Hainaut.  Two years after, his father bought him a captaincy, and he was first under fire at the siege of Philipsbourg.  His father died in 1735, and left him heir to a considerable landed estate, much embarrassed by debt.  The Marquis de la Fare, a friend of the family, soon after sought for him an advantageous marriage to strengthen his position and increase his prospects of promotion; and he accordingly espoused Mademoiselle Angelique Louise Talon du Boulay,—­a union which brought him influential alliances and some property.  Madame de Montcalm bore him ten children, of whom only two sons and four daughters were living in 1752.  “May God preserve them all,” he writes in his autobiography, “and make them prosper for this world and the next!  Perhaps it will be thought that the number is large for so moderate a fortune, especially as four of them are girls; but does God ever abandon his children in their need?”