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CHAPTER V

SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Education in France has neither the moral nor social value it has in England. In the first place, public-school life has nothing like the importance it has with us, where a university education almost suffices to make a gentleman of a young man, for, whatever his origin may be, the Oxonian is pretty sure to plume himself on the prestige of his training. In France there is no equivalent for this rank. Where a man has been educated is of no consequence to him in after life. While he is at school, his parents, if they happen to be nobles, or snobs who desire to pass for nobles, or as belonging to a set bien pensant, like to be able to say that their son is at the school of Vaugirard, Madrid, La Poste, or at the Marists. This fact suffices to pose a family with the hall-mark of indisputable correctness. Neither the Jesuits nor the Marists offer such solid advantages in the way of pretension and reputation as the English universities do,