At Péronne he finished his very irregular course of study at a kind of primary school founded by a philanthropic citizen. During the Directory, attempts were made all over France to get up free institutions for the young, on plans more or less reasonable or absurd, by men who had fed upon Rousseau's _Émile_ and invented variations upon his system. On leaving school, Béranger was placed with a printer in the city, where he became a journeyman printer and compositor, which has occasioned his being often compared to Franklin,--a comparison of which he is not unworthy, in his love for the progress of the human race, and the piquant and ingenious turn he knew how to give to good sense. From this first employment as printer Béranger acquired and retained great nicety in language and grammar. He insisted on it, in his counsels to the young, more than seems natural in a poet of the people. He even exaggerated its importance somewhat, and might seem a purist. Béranger's father reappeared suddenly during the Directory and reclaimed his son, whom he carried to Paris. The father had formed connections in Brittany with the royalists. He had become steward of the household of the Countess of Bourmont, mother of the famous Bourmont who was afterwards Marshal of France and Minister of War. Bourmont himself, then young, was living in Paris, in order the better to conspire for the restoration of the Bourbons. The elder Béranger was neck-deep in these intrigues, and was even prosecuted after the discovery of one of the numerous conspiracies of the day, but acquitted for want of proof. He was the banker and money-broker of the party,--a wretched banker enough! The narrative of the son enables us to see what a miserable business the father was engaged in. This near view of political intriguers, of royalists driven to all manner of expedients and standing at bay, of adventurers who did not shrink from the use of any means, not even the infernal-machine, did not dispose the young man already imbued with republican sentiments to change them, and this initiation into the secrets of the party was not likely to inspire him with much respect for the future Restoration. He had too early seen men and things behind the scenes. His father, in consequence of his swindling transactions, made a bankruptcy, which reduced the son to poverty and filled him with grief and shame.