[Footnote 3164: Moniteur, XXI., 644. (Session of Fructidor 19, year II.) One of the members says: "It is very certain, and my colleagues see it with pain, that public instruction is null."--Fourcroy: "Reading and writing are no longer taught."--Albert Duruy, p. 208. (Report to the Directory executive, Germinal 13, year IV.) "For nearly six years no public instruction exists."--De La Sicotiere, "Histoire du collège de Alençon," p.33: "In 1794, there were only two pupils in the college."--Lunet, "Histoire du collège de Rodez," p.157: "The recitation-rooms remained empty of pupils and teachers from March 1793 to May 16, 1796."--"Statistiques des préfets," Eure, by Masson Saint-Amand year XIII: "In the larger section of the department, school-houses existed with special endowments for teachers of both sexes. The school-houses have been alienated like other national domains; the endowments due to religious corporations or establishments have been extinguished--As to girls, that portion of society has suffered an immense loss, relatively to its education, in the suppression of religious communities which provided them with an almost gratuitous and sufficiently steady instruction."] [Footnote 3165: My maternal grandmother learned how to read from a nun concealed in the cellar of the house.] [Footnote 3166: Albert Duruy, ibid., 349. (Decree of the Directory, Pluviôse 17, year V, and circular of the minister Letourneur against free schools which are "dens of royalism and superstition."--Hence the decrees of the authorities in the departments of Eure, Pas de Calais, Drôme, Mayenne and La Manche, closing these dens.) "From Thermidor 27, year VI, to Messidor 2, year VII, say the authorities of La Manche, we have revoked fifty-eight teachers on their denunciation by the municipalities and by popular clubs."] [Footnote 3167: Archives nationales, cartons 3144 to 3145, No. 104. (Reports of the Councillors of State on mission in the year IX.) Report by Lacuée on the first military division. Three central schools at Paris, one called the Quatre-Nations. "This school must be visited in order to form any idea of the state of destruction and dilapidation which all the national buildings are in. No repairs have been made since the reopening of the schools; everything is going to ruin.... Walls are down and the floors fallen in. To preserve the pupils from the risks which the occupation of these buildings hourly presents, it is necessary to give lessons in rooms which are very unhealthy on account of their small dimensions and dampness. In the drawing-class the papers and models in the portfolios become moldy."] [Footnote 3168: Albert Duruy, ibid., 484. ("Procès-verbaux des conseils-généraux," year IX, passim.)]