He was not only an accomplished university man, but something else besides, as we learnt from a copy of the Figaro, which our eldest brother brought back from college.  In this newspaper we read, in fact, a set of verses by Baour-Lormian, beginning thus:—­

 Que me veut ce Trognon, pedagogue en besicles,
 Dans la fosse du Globe enterrant ses articles!

There was no doubt about it.  My tutor was a journalist, and these lines a revengeful answer to an article of his in the Globe, a newspaper which, as we soon learnt, he had founded in concert with Pierre Leroux, Dubois, Jouffroy, Remusat, and some others.  We discovered too that our journalist was a freethinker as well, and author of a thick octavo book which had been condemned by the Index at Rome, a fact which did not prevent his dying in the most religious frame of mind possible, well nigh in the odour of sanctity.  My tutor was, in truth, of too lofty an intelligence to persevere long in that religious nihilism, that denial of the existence of a future state, which, spreading from religion to family life, and from thence again to the affairs of the State, ends by leaving nothing standing but animal man and his animal passions and appetites.  The long death-struggle of a passionately loved sister, who was supported by the constant ministrations of the Bishop of Beauvais, M. Feutrier, and her calm end, of which he was an eyewitness, began the change within him.  When, in later years, the Abbe Dupanloup, then Vicar of the Church of the Assumption, was charged with the care of my religious education, he and Trognon became very intimate, and death alone interrupted the close communion then established between these two great minds.

The first years of my education were very happy.  Anything dry about it was liberally compensated for by the constant intimacy of the family circle.  We were three sisters and six brothers (this last number soon reduced to five by the death of my brother Penthievre), all living together, eating together, often doing lessons together, together always in all games and pleasure parties and excursions.  What a joyous band we were may easily be guessed.  Each boy had his own tutor, and two governesses were in charge of my sisters.  So long as tutors and governesses only had to deal with their own pupils, all went well, but when the brothers and sisters were all together, and influenced by the spirit of insubordination and love of playing pranks which the elder ones brought back from school, we made life hard and sour to the preceptorial body.  But they got on, somehow.  The GRANDSPARENTS, as we called our parents, taken up as they were by their social engagements, left all initiative to the tutors.  Each of these was only expected to enter daily in a book his report and opinion of the pupil committed to his care.  This book was seen by my father, and he added his own remarks and orders, and then returned it.