Ten Years in the First Form

I CANNOT claim to have been a model schoolboy, and this is why: I am not one of those who spent ten years in the same school. It needed no less than eleven institutions — lycées, private schools, academies — to bring me to my university years. (I do not say to university matriculation; I say years.) The most striking feature of my career in school is that I could never get beyond the first form. I stayed there until I was eighteen years old. The reason is very simple. In all schools, custom demands that the new boy go into the form he has just passed through in the previous educational establishment. Now I, having changed schools eleven times, spent ten terms in my first form.

It is n’t that I want to boast of having been a deplorable student, but I may as well relate my experience of these matters, particularly by way of justifying the occasion I shall take to say what I think of education as it is practised in France — and doubtless in other countries as well.

I

In 1891, being six years old, I was placed with Monsieur de Saint-Ange Bautier, at 15, rue Saint-Ferdinand, in the Ternes quarter. This good man had no great pretensions to being an educator. He taught only reading and writing, and his pupils were necessarily all very young. He wore a long black beard and gold-rimmed spectacles that seemed a part of his austere face. He never took them off altogether — I mean his spectacles. Now and then, in the course of class, he would raise them so that they rested on his pale forehead. This allowed him to wipe his eyes. Then with a brusque upward jerk of his eyebrows Monsieur Bautier would replace his spectacles on his nose and proceed with the lesson.

He seemed not to be in good health; his patience was limitless; and in all my life I have never known a sadder and gentler man than Monsieur de SaintAnge Bautier. But we were not of an age to appreciate patience. As he questioned us ceaselessly, and as his questions were almost always the same, I took it into my head that the man could not possibly know or remember anything. He would ask us, ‘How much are two and two?’ ‘Four!’ we would answer in chorus. And I always said to myself, ‘This makes three days in a row we’ve told him that, and he’s forgotten it again.’

A blackboard hung on the wall behind his desk. We never went up to it; it was his private preserve. More slowly than one can imagine, he would draw long, carefully shaded letters on it in chalk. I imagine that nothing in the world gave him a more voluptuous feeling than the forming of those upstrokes and downstrokes. Young as we were, we sensed that this was his single joy on earth, and we respected it, indeed, as one respects all harmless manias and mute passions. We would watch him at the blackboard, feeling something one does not look for in children, but which was, I am sure, indulgence.

I had the impression — and though it may have been false it was quite definite — that he was particularly fond of certain amongst us. His affection displayed itself in a most curious manner. It seems to me that, knowing that his pupils were taken from him as soon as they had been taught the little he knew himself, he would neglect to teach those he preferred in order to keep them with him as long as possible. On the other hand, those he disliked would learn to read and write in three months. I stayed a year with him and was very proud of it.

This probably explained why, later, I looked upon teachers who tried to make me work as my personal enemies. And to this day, when I hear about a child that is ‘backward,’ I am secretly persuaded that he must be greatly loved.

II

The following year, in 1892, my hair was cut and I was sent to a lycée, Janson-de-Sailly, with full equipment and the compulsory uniform. The pride I felt in my new and novel clothes evaporated very soon. The collar fretted me; my boots were too heavy; my handkerchief seemed enormous; meanwhile, I felt smaller than ever. And besides, it had been dinned into my ears that I should be very happy to be going to a lycee as board pupil; I had been told too often that it was going to do me good: that worried me. Most of all, I was tormented by the thought of what sort of night I was about to live through.

My mother, my grandfather, and my grandmother drove me to school and turned me over to the headmaster. I shall never forget that dreadful moment, in particular because my elders were quite unable to dissemble their emotion. They had tears in their eyes; and as they admonished me again and again to be ‘a brave boy,’ I ended by wondering if I was not being led to sacrifice, if I was not in danger of death, if I was ever to see them again. What was up? Why were they losing their self-possession? What was the reason for their suddenly embracing me wildly and apparently wanting to take me back home? Whose fault was it?

Well, here I am, locked up; this is the end; my mother and grandparents have left. First I am made to walk through interminable corridors. On the way, I drop my washing at the laundry, and I am led to my classroom — lower first. I am introduced to my classmates, and my Christian name instantly induces general hilarity. As a matter of fact, for five years my name in school was Pasha.

After class, we have a brief period of recreation in which I am asked every sort of question and made fun of. Then we dine: a horrible greasy soup; a dish of meat all tendons; green beans, and an orange. After dinner, recreation again, — so that we shall be sure to catch cold, doubtless, — and finally to bed.

The bed is not large, but Lord, how coarse and bristly the sheets are! An usher comes by and walks over to my bed. Is he about to scold me? No. He asks kindly if there is anything I need. I need too many things, and prefer therefore to say I need nothing — and thank him for his kindness.

Everybody is abed. There is a little whispering from cot to cot. The usher turns down the gas and goes on his round, saying, ‘Hush! Sh! Sh! Sh! Sh! Sh! Sh! ’ as if he were seeking to imitate the sound of a railway train, though I am sure he is not.

That night I slept for the first time in my life in the same room with fifty boys of my own age — and I felt that I was sleeping alone for the first time in my life.

III

I was dismissed from Janson-de-Sailly for total incapacity, whereupon my mother placed me with the Fathers who conducted the Holy Cross Academy at 30, avenue du Roule, Neuilly.

What this meant was that in truth my mother had no great hopes for my future. I was a sluggish, absentminded child, not discernibly intelligent, and my extreme gentleness must have been thought slightly hypocritical. This is probably why one of my mother’s friends put into her head the notion that I was ‘just the kind of child’ to take orders, and why, also, everybody was at particular pains to say things in my presence that were intended to awaken the religious vocation in me. And yet in those days I was still without the Faith. I did n’t get it until much later, until I had known several atheists.

My deplorable apathy in school began to be embarrassing as the time for the distribution of school prizes drew near. It was customary for every pupil to be awarded a prize, and all the ingenuity of the masters was employed in this little game. Nobody’s susceptibilities were to be wounded; every family was to be contented. But what prize, what mark of honor, could be given a pupil like me, one who was two forms behind his years and remarkable for both disinclination to study and disobedience?

The great day was coming, and nothing had been invented that I could possibly justify. Even I began to worry. When I thought about the affront my relatives were about to be subjected to, I began to worry about the figure I should cut. I was certainly going to be the only boy in the school not to get a prize. Actually, had it not been for the tormenting thought of my mother’s distress, I might have been glad of the peculiar distinction I was about to enjoy.

The great day came. The assembly room, festooned for the celebration, was filled with people. On the platform, in red armchairs, sat sober gentlemen wearing decorations, an army captain, and a group of priests. At the right, upon, around, and between the legs of a small table, were books and books, all of them red and gilt-edged. Form by form the pupils sat, and behind them their parents and the servants of the dormitories and refectories.

Then came the distribution of the prizes: happiness for all, but shame for me and my relatives. The big boys came first. One of them, named Marcel Robinier, a second-form boy, was awarded seven prizes. How he was applauded! I remember that he could recite by heart twelve pages of the De viris illustribus urbis Romae. That boy is now a hairdresser. After the big boys came the little ones. It was already four o’clock. How swiftly the time had passed! Quick as a wink they had reached the first form — my form, as usual. Geography, drawing, mathematics, history — they went through the list. One after the other my classmates rose, crossed the room, mounted to the platform. Each received his gilt-edged book while the gentleman who presided smiled at his confusion and embraced him. Suddenly, oh miracle! Oh, incredible marvel! My name! I had heard my name! I could n’t breathe! It was n’t possible! Yet it was, for my classmates confirmed it by their amazement. And for the second time I heard, ‘Sacha Guitry: second prize for gymnastics!’

They had finally found me something. A prize for gymnastics, though it was only the second prize, was certainly unexpected. It was my turn to walk the interminable length of the room. On the way, I passed one of the boys who had just received his prizes and was weeping with joy. His emotion was contagious, and by the time I reached the platform my knees were shaky and I thought I was about to faint.

‘Come, my child,’ said the chairman, holding out his arms. ‘ Come, you have won the second prize for gymnastics.’ I went up the first three steps easily, but when I tried the next two my foot slipped, I lost my balance, and I went tumbling down to the foot of the platform. Shrieks, shouts, laughter, pandemonium: all in all a deplorable way of justifying an undeserved second prize in gymnastics!

IV

In 1896, when I was placed with the Dominicans at Arcueil, Father Didon’s function there was certainly vague, but seemed highly important, though it passed when he did. He was not the head of the school; he was not a housemaster in the school — he was its soul. It may be he did nothing, but he was everything. He looked like Coquelin senior — provided you did n’t know Coquelin senior well. He was very tall, very big, and walked with an aweinspiring and deliberate carriage. You never saw him except at a distance, hatless, and alone. He kept a carriage; not a very handsome carriage, perhaps; but when, of a winter evening, it crossed the grounds and we saw his face lighted up by the lamp inside the vehicle, we were very much impressed.

I spent a year and a half at Arcueil and have an unhappy memory of it. It was very cold, the food was very bad, the atmosphere was one of cells, and the lessons were given as if they were punishments.

My brother had been sent down from Arcueil fairly quickly and my mother had put him in the Schlumberg private school in the avenue Bugeaud. He and I would meet at home on Sundays and spend the day together. He never failed to say to me, ‘Why don’t you get yourself thrown out of Arcueil? It’s great at Schlumberg’s! ’ From then on to do nothing was not enough for me: I tried doing everything that would induce them to send me down. But I could n’t get them to do it. They would punish me, all right; but they would n’t send me down.

One day I had what seemed to me a good idea — practically my first idea for a play. I left the classroom and went to the little house where Father Didon lived near the gate of the school grounds. A sort of office boy tried to bar my way, but I told him boldly that Father Didon had sent for me, and I knocked on the door of the study. He called, ‘Come in!’ and in I went.

Father Didon was sitting at his desk, writing. He raised his head.

‘What do you want?’

He spoke curtly, like a man who does n’t want to be interrupted. I was a bit frightened, but I screwed up my courage, fell on my knees before him, and murmured: —

‘Father, I don’t believe in God any longer.‘

It seemed to me that both his eyebrows flew away and I saw in his eyes a look of great astonishment, followed by an expression of the liveliest irritation. Then, calmly, very calmly, he let fall into the silence these words, these very words: —

‘My child . . . we must believe in God. . . . We must . . . because, you see . . . God . . . God exists.‘

And we looked steadily at each other for a few seconds.

Feeling that there was no reason why he should give me a more evident proof of the existence of God, he told me I could go. He did it in a tone which left no room for argument. I got up from my knees. He rose. I grew very afraid. He accompanied me to the door — but not out of courtesy. It was so that he might say to his servant, ‘Hereafter you will allow no pupils to come into my study.’

V

When I left the Dominicans at Arcueil — after going to a great deal of trouble to be sent down — I was taken home by a monitor who said, on the way, ‘I envy you.’ My mother sent me to join my brother at Schlumberg’s, which he had said was ‘great.’

Monsieur Schlumberg was an alcoholic pedagogue of German birth who had become a French citizen in order to found a cramming school to prepare students for Saint-Cyr, Polytechnique, and the other institutions of higher education.

There were thirty of us, ten board pupils and about twenty day pupils. I was a board pupil, as usual, but now I had my own room. What a joy it was to have a room to oneself! To ask other boys in and boil watery chocolate over an alcohol lamp! To be caught at it as we were one night by a reeling Schlumberg wearing a nightshirt and a top hat!

The teachers were Schlumberg himself, who taught German to the French boys and French to the Germans, and Messrs. Lassol and Henriet, who taught all the rest — history, geography, arit hmetic, algebra, and so on. I was just out of the first form and went back into it — no novelty for me. Knowing that this was to be, I expected that I, who was now thirteen years old, would again find myself with children of seven or eight. J was mistaken, most happily. I was neither the oldest nor the most ignorant in my form. The oldest was thirty-seven and he was still learning about Louis the Eleventh. I owe it to the truth to add that he was Greek, and stuttered, and seemed never to have got over the typhoid fever he had had as a child.

I might easily describe what Schlumberg’s was; but I can do better than that. There was at Schlumberg’s a yellow notebook, bound in boards, labeled ‘Classroom Notes.’ In this notebook Schlumberg and his assistants, and the ushers as well, kept a precise record of the behavior of the pupils — shall I say of their misbehavior? — and the punishment meted out. I have that notebook. I have it because I stole it. I stole it because my father, who knew it existed, once said he would like to read it ‘at his leisure,’ as he put it. I knew perfectly well what he wanted to do with it: he wanted to show it to his cronies — and they laughed hilariously over it. Perhaps you will laugh, too. I insist upon giving my word that I have not added or deleted so much as a comma in the following excerpts: —

November 8 (Study, 5 to 7 o’clock). — Parsons asleep; Wells dreaming; Williamson breaking nuts on the head of Zogheb, who is crying.

Friday, November 11. — Grose is making the class laugh by sticking out his tongue at the master, whose back is turned. During recreation, Zogheb is again out of his mind and shouting, while little Pierre, egged on by Zogheb, is shrieking at the top of his voice, ‘Down with the Germans!’

Monday, November 14. — Parsons spent the morning in Grose’s room with Barbier, both telling him they greatly admired the monkeyshines. wild gestures, and the rest of the pantomime which Master Parsons performed during the study period to-day. Grose went to Barbier’s room at five o’clock and then to Wells’s, where the two held a brief colloquy, following which Grose, Barbier, and Wells raised the devil in their study.

If you will bear in mind that Grose, Wells, Barbier, Parsons, Zogheb, and the others were children between the ages of eight and twelve years, you will be better able to admire the imbecility of the masters whose business it was to educate us.

Thursday, 12th (Geometry class). — I ask Guitry why he does not attend the geometry class. In a matter-of-fact voice he answers: ‘Sir, I haven’t been able to come to terms with Monsieur Sehlumberg on that question.’

Tuesday, 17th.—To-day Guitry has done neither his French lesson nor his mathematics lesson. He persists in doing as he pleases and in going to his room without permission. Wells disappeared after lunch. He went off on his bicycle without anybody’s permission. Lipmann went out at one o’clock without permission and stayed away until five.

Tuesday, February 7. — During the 3.30 recreation period Wells walked the firststory window ledges facing on the courtyard.

Thursday, February 23. — Funeral of His Excellency the President of the Republic.

Nine o’clock class. — I was under the necessity of calling Wells’s attention to an intolerable lack of decorum. Wells walked out.

Study, 5 to 7 o’clock. — Bloch minor refuses to work. He wrote only two lines of his composition in a whole hour. I am not satisfied with that pupil.

Thursday, March 2. — The Guitry brothers are careless about their compositions and their lessons. They read too many novels.

Wednesday. — The Guitrvs do as they please. Neither of them has corrected the faults in his composition. Both are exceedingly slovenly in their work. Guitry major, when verse was dictated to him, went so far as to neglect to put it into verse form. I have no disciplinary means by which to bring these pupils to reason.

Saturday, March 25. — Wells was absent from Study this morning. He does n’t know his lesson and refuses to learn it. Wells pretends he did not know that he was to have studied it. Despite the opposition of the rest of the class, he insists that he will not learn prose, that he is no more obliged to learn it than to learn poetry. I answer that if that is the way things are, he may as well assume that he has the right to say whether he will attend class or not, which is impossible. Thereupon, on the pretext that I have put him out, he leaves and does not return.
I have already observed that Wells puts a good deal of meanness into his retorts.

That little added sentence about the meanness of the little boy’s retorts struck me when I first read it. I could not understand it. What did he mean by ‘meanness’? How could a pupil be mean toward his superior? It is a long time since I saw that sentence, and now that I reread it I recognize it. Once again it seems to me rather sad and quite different from the other observations in the notebook. It is very simply written, almost childish. It is not stern, but rather as if the writer had moaned a little. He takes note of the meanness of his pupil — and that is all: there is no demand that the pupil be punished. If the boy had been impudent, he would have given him three hundred lines, of course, or deprived him of his dessert; but he was only mean, and the usher was disarmed — and suddenly pitiful, one would say.

Monday, March 27. — Guitry major reads novels instead of doing his lesson. He takes no notes and merely lets his pencil stray over the paper.

Saturday, April 21. — Guitry minor is exasperatingly heedless. He was already reported to the Head this morning for his slovenly French composition. I am sorry to have to report him again. His arithmetic lesson is very carelessly written, almost illegible. The boy is going through a bad phase. I am asking that he be not allowed to go out to-morrow until he has copied out to-day’s lesson four times.

Evening Study, 8 P.M. — Zogheb illbehaved and noisy. The pupils do no work, but chatter. Guitry major makes them all laugh by his antics. Viaud, constantly talking, refuses to do the task I set him as punishment. Guitry minor imitates his brother, laughing loudly and talking aloud.

Wednesday, April 26. — The Guitry brothers have to be admonished repeatedly. At 10.10 I was in Room 1 with my pupil, Remicci. The Guitry brothers entered the room dancing. By what right? I sent them downstairs. Soon after, I heard a loud noise in the direction of Room 3. Going there, I found the Guitry brothers fighting and throwing books at each other. I sent them down again. It is very tiresome to have to admonish the same pupils over and over.

June 7 (Study, 2.30).—Over an hour, and Guitry major has n’t yet done any work. This pupil is most indecently dressed: no collar, no tie, shirt rumpled, his flannel vest showing. He complains of the heat and lies down on the floor, where, for ten minutes, he has been simulating guitarplaying with a racket.

June 10 (Study, 5 to 7 o’clock). — Study would be very quiet except for the Guitry brothers.

It was from this school that I escaped one day and ran to the family greengrocer’s, where I left an order, supposedly on behalf of my mother.

I said, ‘Please let me have four kilograms of sugar at 75 centimes the kilogram, ¼ kilogram of lentils at two francs the kilo, ⅛ kilogram of salt at 50 centimes the kilo, and 3½ pounds of flour at 80 centimes the kilo.’

‘Certainly, Master Sacha,’said the grocer; and he wrote it all down.

‘How much will all that make?’

He told me it would come to 5.05 francs. I thanked him and ran back to school, for I had just got him to do the problem we had been asked to solve that same morning.

VI

The eighth of my schools was another cramming school called the Institution Chevalier, for I had meanwhile spent three months in the École Lacordaire and a month at the lycée of Chambéry. All I have to say about that lycée is that it was a penal colony for children. As for the ficole Lacordaire, if I may say so, it was a branch establishment of the Dominicans of Arcueil. I have only one memory of it — Father Metayer, who was master of my form. I thought of him, at the time, as a fairly old man, but he was in fact very young, for I have seen him lately and he is still young. He was strict, but he was not unjust, and he was a man of distinguished mind. It was he who had me sent down, but I take it that he forgave me the annoyance I must have caused him, since he asked me two or three years ago to serve as toastmaster at a banquet of old boys of the school. He came to my dressing room at the theatre, and I had a short chat with him which bore witness to the purity of his nature and his total ignorance of the theatre. He was waiting for me when I arrived. I sat down before the glass and began to make up.

‘What are you doing, Sacha?’

‘Why, making up, Father.‘

‘You must n’t make up, Sacha. No man should make up.’

I explained carefully why I had to do it. Courteously, he refrained from pressing the point; but I felt keenly that I had not convinced him.

I spent only forty-eight hours at the Institution Chevalier, having been put there by mistake. The place was a cramming school with only two classes, one in rhetoric and the other in philosophy. Somebody had forgotten that I was still in the first form!

VII

Hoswell’s was an English school established at Passy and enjoying a wellmerited reputation for excellence. Its head, Mr. Hoswell, was a pleasant and serious-minded person, with an intelligent view of what should constitute the education of the boys entrusted to him. His method was rational: he considered that the health of the body was equally important with the health of the mind. There were sports, there was good food — and we washed! Roswell’s was the first school I went to where there were showers. The classes were less boring than those I had known before, and a sane and happy atmosphere pervaded the school.

Mr. Hoswell had a son, Edmund, who was eighteen years old and extremely attractive. Everything was going well until one day, suddenly, Mr. Hoswell died of a blood clot. Edmund was his heir. The school was Edmund’s heritage. There were twelve of us in school. Edmund wrote twelve letters, one to each family, announcing the death of his father and informing our relatives that his uncle would take over. But he had no uncle. He discharged the masters. All of us agreeing to breathe no word to our parents, we conceived the wonderful idea of spending the fees paid for our instruction upon a succession of feasts, outings, and gay parties. Unfortunately, this marvelous existence was of short duration. Someone gave the show away, and four months later Hoswell’s closed its doors.

VIII

My tenth school was in the rue de Passy. It is still there. It is called the Institution Mariaud and is a very hard-working school, preparing boys for university entrance.

There was a boy there who was thin and dark and never wore a hat and was always very busy and desired extremely to be educated. He was willing, likable, and very intelligent, but his intelligence was chaotic. He never knew what was going on. During history class he would be doing his English composition. His name was Paul Defrene. His name now is Paul Dufreny, he is my secretary, and he has n’t changed a jot. He is always doing something, but as he is never doing what I have asked him to do, he seems always to be doing nothing. I believe he knows more useless things than anybody else on earth. He knows the exact weight of the Eiffel Tower, the quantity of water contained in the yolk of an egg, and the length of the rue de Rivoli within ten metres.

Recently I was in Turin. He telephoned me at two o’clock in the morning to ask what was ‘my’ definition of the word ‘work.’ He has several precious qualities, but he has one great fault: he cannot possibly lie. When I wish not to be disturbed, and ask him to receive a caller for me and say that I am out, he does it in such a way as to make the person an enemy of mine. But, though he has the brain of a sparrow, he has the soul of a St. Bernard. He would put his hand into the fire for me — which may be the reason why, not long ago, he set fire to the chimney in my study.

I have one delightful — and repeated — memory of the Institution Mariaud. Every now and again, in the spring, an open carriage would stop before the door of the school toward a quarter to one. My father would be there to fetch me for luncheon with him. From his seat in the carriage, he would call out to me. I would run to the window.

‘I am lunching at Armenonville, in the Bois. What about you ? ’

Down the stairs I would go like mad. Poor Mariaud would sometimes be there to bar my way — the lunatic! One day he even went out into the street and said to my father, ‘Monsieur Guitry, he has n’t done a stroke of work for three days.’ I can see my father’s smile and hear him again as he murmured in Mariaud’s ear, ‘Don’t you give a damn about that, Monsieur Mariaud.’

In point of fact it was at Mariaud’s that I finally acquired a taste for work. Not classwork, mind you, but extracurricular work. It was there I wrote my first play. I was sixteen years old. The notion of writing a play came to me suddenly out of nowhere, and I began. I used to be caught writing, and punished, and Monsieur Mariaud would say, ‘What obstinacy!’ I don’t regret having been obstinate.

IX

My eleventh school — for in the course of writing these memoirs I have suddenly bethought myself that I was boasting when I said I had been through only eleven schools; there were twelve, and the eleventh, which I had until now forgotten, was in the Monceau quarter. I did not stay there long. It was run by a Monsieur and Madame Grandin — in a manner of speaking. Actually, they gave heed only to their personal affairs.

We never knew quite what happened, but one Monday morning we found the door of the school closed.

My twelfth and last school was at 77, rue des Dames. It was run by a Monsieur Prax, who was a very nice person.

He had given up his room to me, and I enjoyed a certain measure of freedom in his house — which I used and even abused. I was seventeen! I took many a meal out, many a class not at all, and I often came in late at night or early in the morning.

Monsieur Prax bore with me for several months, but in the end he thought it his duty to inform my father.

At that time my father was director of the Renaissance Theatre and was playing La Châtelaine there. That was thirty-two years ago. To the theatre went Monsieur Prax, knocked on my father’s dressing-room door, walked in, and said: —

’Sir, I have made up my mind to expel your son; but unfortunately I cannot do it.’

‘Why not?’ asked my father. ‘If you won’t keep him, I’m sorry. I suppose you’ll have to send him away.’

‘That is impossible, sir. I can’t put him out — because he has n’t come home these past five days.’

And there you are: I had finished my education without having ever begun it.

X

One cannot avoid sending one’s children to school. That is by way of being an obligation, but most of all it is a necessity. People must learn, when they are young, to live with each other. Now the great misfortune is that in school we are not taught to live, we are not made ready for life; and it is a crime not to tell us, before we are told anything else, that work is the greatest of life’s joys. If, from childhood, we had implanted in our minds the idea that our happiness depends upon our choice of an occupation, we would work toward this end and we would choose our occupation with infinitely more care.

We are told that recreation begins the moment we stop work. That is harmful. Nothing should be more recreational than work. And classwork should be passionately interesting. Of course for this we should have to have passionately interested teachers, people convinced of the beauty of their mission — and not poor crocks whose chief characteristics are their mediocrity and their commonplaceness. What is more, classes should not be held in cold, unfriendly rooms. What is wanted is an immense library — and the right to roam among the shelves at will should be the highest prize awarded to a pupil. I dream of the time when a master will be able to say to a pupil, ‘You behaved badly, and I shall punish you. You will not be allowed to attend class.’

Another thing. The time we lose in school is lost during the most precious period of our lives. At the very moment when our intelligence is beginning to blossom we are put into the hands of priests who know nothing at all of life, or of men who are perhaps too bitter about it to be able to make us love it. I am convinced that we are extremely intelligent between the ages of eight and fourteen years, and that most of us are less so between fourteen and twenty, much less. Why? Because when we leave school we know nothing of life, are not armed for it; and this is why we do so many foolish things when we are eighteen.

Freed from the parental yoke, handed over to the supervision of schoolmasters, we are utterly defenseless; and if our evil instincts do not guide us, then there are sure to be evil companions to lead us astray — either for a time or forever. There are doubtless many exceptions; but I maintain that they do not prove me wrong. All the originality that we possess between the ages of eight and fourteen — our natural aptitudes, our individual gifts — are dead when we reach our eighteenth year. Of course these gifts may return later, but what time lost!

Summing up, I charge our present system of education with not fashioning a weapon for the meeting of life. Life is a struggle — not all one’s life, but its beginnings are a struggle against others, against events, and against ourselves. And nobody will deny that a single year of poverty implants in us the love and the respect for work, for it teaches us the joy and value of work. During my ten years of school I was a most fearful dud, but I believe I may say that I have made up for time lost; and I am convinced to-day that the man who does not love his work, who works without joy and for the sole purpose of earning a livelihood, is the most miserable of men.

(To be continued)