there appears this item: Chevallier, floor-polisher and corrector. This humble official represented an institution which had been preserved intact throughout the centuries.
'How changed the times are!' exclaimed Caraccioli, under Louis XVI. 'Flogging is almost abandoned; conduct is governed more by honour than punishment, though the indecent and barbarous method of flogging is not yet entirely abolished.'
The rod was still a part of school equipment in the second half of the eighteenth century. Besnard reports that the head of the college where he studied always appeared in class armed with a flat strip of whale-bone which had a silver ferule at each end. He would use this on the knuckles of inattentive pupils without any warning. He also kept a rod and whip handy, and freely used them.
The cry of Erasmus's student: Væ nostris natibus, was heard up to and beyond the revolutionary epoch. One of the institutions which no-one thought of attacking in the years preceding the cataclysm was this one of fustigation. The Abbé Morellet states that he was flogged by the jesuits every Saturday. Voltaire had a painful
