Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/166

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reward. He has never, for five mortal minutes, been permitted to show himself for the young barbarian he is. He is a pious old diplomat, a rascal in posse, a sage in esse, when he ought to be a simple, high-spirited, or dreaming child. Between his spiritual readings, his meditations, his confessions, church services, retreats, and rigid discipline, whose control of every minute only ceases when the poor martyr enters the lovely land of dreams,—where the Marists, if they could, would follow him, to see that imagination played no tricks on their training, and that in that world of vagaries and topsyturvyism he was still the pious, silent, and obedient lad they had formed,—he is not a form of boyhood it is pleasant to contemplate. He is allowed fifteen minutes to dress of a morning, under watch, to see "that he dresses promptly and decently beside his bed," and out of that there is not much time for ablutions. Possibly, like the kings of France, his washing consists of ten fingers dipped into a basin no larger than a milk-bowl. In class he must make no movement of foot or desk, his mind must not wander, he may not open any other book but the class-book in use, he must not draw, or give himself up to any frivolous occupation—presumably verse-making. If he has need to open his desk, he must only lift the lid half-way, and never lock it, as the prefect visits it once a week. He washes his feet once a week