It is quite a different matter in the country.  A peasant woman is not always with her child; he is obliged to learn to say very clearly and loudly what he wants, if he is to make himself understood.  Children scattered about the fields at a distance from their fathers, mothers and other children, gain practice in making themselves heard at a distance, and in adapting the loudness of the voice to the distance which separates them from those to whom they want to speak.  This is the real way to learn pronunciation, not by stammering out a few vowels into the ear of an attentive governess.  So when you question a peasant child, he may be too shy to answer, but what he says he says distinctly, while the nurse must serve as interpreter for the town child; without her one can understand nothing of what he is muttering between his teeth. [Footnote:  There are exceptions to this; and often those children who at first are most difficult to hear, become the noisiest when they begin to raise their voices.  But if I were to enter into all these details I should never make an end; every sensible reader ought to see that defect and excess, caused by the same abuse, are both corrected by my method.  I regard the two maxims as inseparable—­always enough—­never too much.  When the first ii well established, the latter necessarily follows on it.]

As they grow older, the boys are supposed to be cured of this fault at college, the girls in the convent schools; and indeed both usually speak more clearly than children brought up entirely at home.  But they are prevented from acquiring as clear a pronunciation as the peasants in this way—­they are required to learn all sorts of things by heart, and to repeat aloud what they have learnt; for when they are studying they get into the way of gabbling and pronouncing carelessly and ill; it is still worse when they repeat their lessons; they cannot find the right words, they drag out their syllables.  This is only possible when the memory hesitates, the tongue does not stammer of itself.  Thus they acquire or continue habits of bad pronunciation.  Later on you will see that Emile does not acquire such habits or at least not from this cause.

I grant you uneducated people and villagers often fall into the opposite extreme.  They almost always speak too loud; their pronunciation is too exact, and leads to rough and coarse articulation; their accent is too pronounced, they choose their expressions badly, etc.

But, to begin with, this extreme strikes me as much less dangerous than the other, for the first law of speech is to make oneself understood, and the chief fault is to fail to be understood.  To pride ourselves on having no accent is to pride ourselves on ridding our phrases of strength and elegance.  Emphasis is the soul of speech, it gives it its feeling and truth.  Emphasis deceives less than words; perhaps that is why well-educated people are so afraid of it.  From the custom of saying everything in the