But the count had been brought up strictly by his father. Accustomed early in life to unquestioning obedience, he desired his son to be no less submissive to him. At the age of six, young Frédéric lost his mother. The count did not choose to marry again; he had a son to inherit his name, and that was enough for him. He placed Frédéric at one of the best schools in Paris. At fourteen, the young count, who was endowed with an unusually fine intellect, had carried off several prizes. His education was not then completed; but his father, fearing that at that age he might form some dangerous intimacy, and impelled by his longing to have him always by his side, in order to accustom him to absolute obedience, took him away from the school, and gave him a private tutor. This tutor, in whose charge the count placed his son, and with whom we shall soon become very well acquainted, was neither a scholar nor a man of brains; far from it. But he was entirely at the orders of monsieur le comte, and would not have taken his pupil out to walk without first asking the father's permission; that was the reason for his selection, despite his limited mental qualifications. The count was very fond of his son, but he would have been very sorry to allow the full depth of his affection to appear; he would have considered that he had forfeited his dignity and his claim to Frédéric's respect if he had spoken to him in the kindly tone of a dear friend. But is not our father the first friend that nature gives us? and ought the respect we owe him to banish confidence and intimacy? Frédéric loved his father, but he trembled before him. Accustomed from childhood never to reply to him, and to obey promptly his lightest word, he had retained, as he grew to manhood, that habit of passive obedience and that timidity which made it impossible for him to allow his heart to speak freely in his father's presence. But we must do the Comte de Montreville the justice to say that he did not abuse his power over his son. When Frédéric was eighteen, and his education was at an end, the count dismissed the tutor, and, having sent for the young man to come to him, addressed him thus: