The schools of the fourteenth century were not entirely free; and as a certain proportion of their profits went to the patron, he filled up the gaps as soon as possible. The village priest was often the schoolmaster, and the instruction was always chiefly religious; but the boys were also taught the rudiments of Latin grammar. The ideal of every peasant was to have a son in the Church--a son who might become abbot, bishop, chancellor, cardinal. It was their one great chance of rising in the world. But in the kingdom of the Mind, many are called, few chosen. Of the dozen or so boys who went to every village school (each with a dim idea that perhaps by-and-by he might become a parish priest, or enter some religious order) a fair proportion grew up as stewards or labourers.[45] Some, no doubt, persevered in their original intention; some went to the town, or, tiring of grammar, ‘listed for a soldier; but, alas! we meet with a good many of them in the _Registers of the Châtelet_. Perhaps--who knows?--these ne’er-do-wells were the most useful of them all, for their depositions in the Court of Justice throw many curious lights on mediæval education. Thus, for example, one Jehannin de la Montaigne, a wandering mason accused of horse-stealing, invokes the privilege of clergy, asserting that he was tonsured at the age of eight years old when he went to school and learned his psalter--“car auparavant qu’il aprenist son dit métier de maçon, il avait esté avec plusieurs enfans d’icelle ville de Château Regnault à l’escole de la dite ville et avoit aprins jusqu’à son _Donnet_ et _Catonnet_; et lors il savait bien lire.”[46] This _Donnet_ or _Donat_ was the grammatical treatise of the learned Ælius Donatus, that glory of the fourth century, whose vigilant elucubrations were very popular throughout a thousand years. _Catonnet_, a school-book equally universal, was one century older: it was a paraphrase of the distiches of Dionysius Cato, once a famous philologist. These were both great doctors. To-day, as you see, we scarcely know their names.