Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/152

 atmosphere of a prison, then let the French lycée be his choice. The minister decided for knowledge; and I believe his son returned to Athens a very brilliant young fellow, and all that a statesman could desire his son to be. He would have learnt less in England, but certainly he would have had a pleasanter time; and to me it always seems that our real education only begins when we have left off compulsory learning; that what we teach ourselves and not what others teach us is of consequence. A duffer will always be a duffer, however much you may stuff his head; the main thing is that he should be an honest duffer. The brilliant boy will never fail to light upon food for his brains wherever he may find himself.

The misfortune is that everything in France leads to politics, and hence we have had the disgraceful sight of students in revolt against their professor, hissing and pelting him because elsewhere he had chosen to express political views to which these wise and learned young gentlemen objected, or because his politics were not those of their parents. The class of an eminent professor at Bordeaux was deserted, and stones were flung at him in the street by his pupils, for a graceful and manly reference to the cause of the death of the dean of his university, whose funeral oration he was called upon to pronounce. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to acquire