202 LITERARY AND scientific men.

be disgraced on the benches of a school of correction,and 1 caused him to be entered as Pierre Buffiere.

1764. My gentleman struggled, wept, argued in vain. I bid

7 Etat.him win my name, which I would only restore when he1£ - deserved it.” Had the father been just the youth wouldsoon have regained his affections and name. The abbeChoquart, at first severe with his pupil, soon becameattached to and proud of him. His progress was aston-ishing, his memory prodigious. The dead and livinglanguages, mathematics, drawing, and music, and variousmanly exercises, occupied him by turns, and he distin-guished himself in all. In the midst of the marquis’svituperations we find no absolute facts. He calls hisson lying by nature, base, and so vicious that theworst consequences are to be apprehended: this is car-ried so far that, when he mentions that his mastersapplaud and his comrades love him, he adds that theboy ought to be smothered, if it were only for hispowers of cajolery and fascination.

This severity frightened but did not conquer theyouth. He worked hard to obtain his father’s appro-bation ; but indiscretions came between to widen thebreach. Perpetually in expectation of some degradingor excessive punishment, he lived in a state of excite-ment, and even terror, ill fitted to inspire the gentlenessand repose of spirit which is the best ingredient of ho-nour and virtue. As he grew older his turbulence becamemore dangerous; and his father, considering it necessaryto tame him by increased hardships, placed him in thearmy. “ I am going to send him,” he writes, “ as volun-teer, to the strictest and most laborious military school.A man, a chip of the old times, the marquis de Lam-bert, has founded one in his regiment. He pretendsthat the exclusive atmosphere of honour, and a hard andcold moral regimen, can restore beings the most vitiatedeven by nature. I have requested him to name as Men-tor an officer who, not from reason and deduction, butfrom instinct, should have a disgust and natural scornfor all baseness. I have named Gervin as his other