“That is all very fine for rich people, sir,” the father of the family would answer, “but we are poor folk, and can’t afford all that education for our boys. They can always learn enough at home to work on the land.” “Look here,” says Monsieur Donnat, “there is nothing better than a good education. You need not worry about payment. You will give me every year so many loads of wheat and so many barrels of wine or casks of oil--in that way we will arrange matters.” The good farmer gladly agreed his boy should go to St. Michel de Frigolet. Monsieur Donnat then went on to a shopkeeper and began in this wise: “A fine little boy that is of yours!--and he looks wide awake too! Now you don’t want to make a pounder of pepper of him, do you?” “Ah, sir, if we could we would give him a little education, but colleges are so expensive, and when one isn’t rich----” “Are you on the look-out for a college?” exclaimed Monsieur Donnat. “Why, send him to my school, up there at Saint-Michel, we will teach him a little Latin and make a man of him! And--as to payment, we will take toll of the shop. You will have in me another customer, and a good customer, I can tell you!” And without further question the shopkeeper confided his son to Monsieur Donnat. In this way Monsieur Donnat gathered into his school some forty small boys of the neighbourhood, myself among them. Out of the number, some parents, like my own, paid in money, but quite three-fourths paid in kind--provisions, goods, or their labour. In one word, Monsieur Donnat, before the Republic, social and democratic, had easily, and without any hubbub, solved the problem of the Bank of Exchange, a measure which the famous Proudhon in 1848 preached in vain. One of the scholars I remember well. I think he was from Nîmes, and we called him Agnel; he was rather like a girl, gentle and pretty, with something sad in his look. Our parents came often to see us and brought us cakes and other good things. But Agnel appeared to have no relations, no one came to see him and he never spoke of those belonging to him. Only on one occasion had a tall strange gentleman of haughty and mysterious aspect appeared at the convent and inquired for Agnel. The interview, which was private, had lasted for about half an hour, after which the tall gentleman had departed and never reappeared. This gave rise to the conjecture that Agnel was a child of superior though illegitimate birth, being brought up in hiding at Saint-Michel. I lost sight of him completely on leaving.