leads to nothing, or to the law school, which is almost the same thing, for, speaking generally, the students have no other object than the avoidance of the three years' military service." The scientific baccalauréat leads to the Polytechnique school, to St. Cyr, or to the school of medicine, but those who wish to become officers or doctors do not leave the lycée after the baccalauréat, and some stay on three or four years longer. The externes, that is, those who go to the lycées only for the classes, are well off, for these find their pleasures and moral training where they should be found, at home and with comrades of their own choosing. But the demi-*pensionnaires are nearly as unfortunate as the internes, as these are condemned to most of the prison tortures of one of the worst gifts the genius of Napoleon gave to the land he so basely used. "Everyone knows well enough our dreadful college," writes M. Demolins, "with its much too long classes and studies, its recreations far too short and without exercise, its prison walks, a monotonous going and coming between high, heart-breaking walls, and then every Sunday and Thursday the military promenade in rank, the exercise of aged men and not of youth."
For this reason you will never hear a French boy speak with any kindly sentiment of his school-days. Napoleon, who invented the
