“Very well,” he continued, “we understand one another. At present, for a man of our name, there is in France only one profession, that of a soldier. So long as our country is in the hands of the _canaille_ and so long as we have the Germans to fight, our duty is in the only place that remains to us--the army. Thank God my father and my mother share these opinions. Lucien will be a soldier, and a soldier has no need of knowing all that the people prate about to-day. Having honor, sangfroid, muscles and loving France, everything is right. I had all the trouble in the world to take my degree. This year must be for Lucien, above everything else, a year of outdoor life; and, for studies, these must be conversations only. It is to your talks with him that I wish to call your attention. You must insist on the practical, on the positive, and on principles. He has some faults which must be corrected. You will find him very good, but very soft; he must learn to endure.” “Insist, for example, upon his going out in all sorts of weather, that he walk two or three hours every day. He is very inexact, and I insist that he shall become as punctual as a chronometer. He also is untruthful. I think this the most horrible of vices. I can pardon everything, yes, many, many follies. I never forgive a falsehood. We have had, from my father’s old master, such good recommendation of you, of your life with your mother, of your dignity, of your strictness, that we depend very much on your influence. Your age permits you to be as much a companion as a preceptor for Lucien. Example, you see, is the best kind of teaching. Tell a conscript that it is a noble and fine thing to march up to the fire, and he will listen to you without understanding you. March in front of him, swaggering, and he becomes more of a blusterer than you are. “As for me, I rejoin my regiment in a few days, but absent or present, you can depend on my support; if it should ever be a question what to do, that this child become what he ought to become, a man who can serve his country bravely, and, if God permit, his king.” This discourse, which I believe I have faithfully reproduced, did not at all astonish me. It was quite natural in a house in which the father was an old monomaniac, the mother a simple housekeeper, the sister young and timid, that the oldest brother should hold a directing place, and talk with the new preceptor. It was also quite natural that a soldier and a gentleman educated in the ideas of his class and of his profession should speak as a soldier and a gentleman.