Religion and the family oppose but a feeble obstacle to the profligacy of youths during the period of secondary instruction; but in that of the higher grade, the young man shaking off this uncomfortable check, inaugurates his life as a citizen by procuring a degraded mistress, who initiates him into every sort of wickedness.[36] The student away from home often lives in those social circles which are the most corrupting. It is incredible to what extent the guests at these social gatherings dread the company of respectable people. They give themselves out as ‘_bored_’ if they have to make their appearance at a _family_ dinner, try to escape from a ball in good society, shun a drawing-room where they must observe some proprieties of behaviour, and curse every atmosphere which keeps them away from their cigar, their beer, the racket of the billiard-table, the public-house and the orgie where their nights are spent. Far from being ashamed of this kind of life, they have, as we can testify, the impudence to appear in our law courts as complainants, if the women with whom they are cohabiting rob them of a few francs. Students of law, medicine, &c., often picked up drunk in the streets, at two and three o’clock in the morning, are brought up for creating a disturbance at night. “You have,” the judge tells them, “ill-used women with whom you are cohabiting; but the fact of notorious profligacy is not an object of legal repression or even of censure.” A law student twice attempted to stab with a poinard one of his rivals who was seated at a table of the _Eldorado café_. The prosecution proved that this assassin had for four years been living with prostitutes in the most unrestrained debauchery.[37] By an odd coincidence, the newspapers were giving a report of this degradation of a young man entrusted to our society, by an honourable family, for the sake of his education, viz., for the elevation of his mind and heart, on the very day that the Senate, after having approved of the irresponsibility of public officials, was adding a peroration to an address, to celebrate the principles of _loyalty and morality_ in which we are bringing up the young. Let us look a little more closely at the language of facts, and we shall understand the unhappiness of parents compelled to have their sons brought up amidst circumstances in which the principles of _loyalty and morality_ may be trampled under foot with a cynicism of this character. There is no longer such a thing as youth, some one exclaims with sadness, in taking notice of morals of this description. There is no longer a fatherland, one might rejoin. Are the domestic virtues, then, no longer the school for civil ones? If any guardianship, or disciplinary regimen, is exercised over students, apart from acts which do not fall within the penal law, is it logical to make them out to be so rigorous in discourses read to foreigners while shutting our eyes to the crimes I am enumerating? Should not tutors that