“As for me,” he says, in his admirable introduction to the “Education des Filles,” “I love to picture to myself the young woman, educated by Fénélon, as he has painted her, in the setting of a provincial ‘gentilhommière’ he has chosen for her. Up with the dawn, lest laziness or self-indulgence should gain any hold on her; carefully planning the employment of her own day, and that of her servants, and apportioning its various tasks among them with gentle authority; devoting to her children all the time that is necessary to learn to know their characters, and to train them in right principles; her clever hands always busy with some useful piece of needlework; interesting herself in the business of the farm and the estate, and missing no opportunity of learning even from the humblest of those engaged on them; thoughtful for the comforts and wants of her dependents; founding little schools for poor children, and interesting her friends in the care of the destitute sick; leading amid solid and useful occupations, such as these, a full if uneventful existence, and animating everything about her with the same sentiment of life.” No one who knows intimately the Catholic women of France can fail to recognise the type, and in its persistence (which really inspires a belief in the resurrection of France) must see an overwhelming justification of the statesmanship of Louis XIV. “What France needs,” says Père La Chaise, and he spoke for his royal penitent, too, “is not good nuns—we have enough of them—but good mothers of families.” It is the glory of Saint-Cyr, from its foundation until it fell under the axe of Revolution, to have furnished France with them, and, what is more, to have assured the vitality of the strain in a degree to which the affairs of France bear witness even to-day. When at a recent re-union of the “Ligue des Femmes Françaises,” the Catholic Women’s League of France, we saw the portrait of the ideal “Femme Française,” drawn by the Marquis de Lespinay, and recognised, in every gracious detail, its identity with the ideal which Fénélon formulated, and Saint-Cyr realized, did it not seem, indeed, that Madame de Maintenon’s prayer had been heard? That Saint-Cyr will live—in spirit at least—as long as France, and that France will live—because of it—as long as the world? Vive Saint-Cyr! Puisse-t-il durer autant que la France, et la France autant que le monde! * * * * *