They fear family life because of the freedom which reigns there, and because they know nothing worse for a man than a precocious impulse towards sensibility. “When I was twenty,” growls an old man, “I knew nothing about women; in these days, infants in arms are further advanced.” That is a proof, someone will say, of superior intelligence, a guarantee of their virtue. Not at all. Any system, even college, was preferred to the education of men by women. From the moment when tenderness and sympathy become paramount in a house, there is no course open but to get rid of the boys at any cost. But is not this to push rigour a little too far, and uselessly to lacerate the mother’s heart, this aching heart which thought it had at last found something to fill its void? The mothers are not lacking in arguments to support their claims. They refuse absolutely to acknowledge that kindness necessarily spells weakness. Has it not been understood from time immemorial, by people who could least be suspected of sentimentalism, how important it is to preserve for a man his refuge in the affection of his mother? Have not the names of Saint Monica and so many other devoted mothers always been cited with delight? A rational education ought not to rely solely on the principle of fear: it should be the express image of life; and if brutality and coarseness are to be banished from the world, it will not do to begin by sowing them broadcast. How many men, nobly fashioned by the hands of women, have been brought, by means of love’s training alone, to a perfect perception of authority, reverence, discipline! Affection has a wisdom of its own, secret agencies of its own; a mother’s heart can see as clearly, and obtain as many practical results, as the reason and the despotism of the father. In this, as in other things, force is not everything, and another regimen is possible than that of the “birch,” or indeed of the “filliping,” dear to Montaigne. Margaret of France offers us on this subject a pertinent object-lesson; she cites herself. Her mother, Louise of Savoy, left a widow, indulged to the utmost the luxury of freely loving her children. When someone spoke to her of handing her son over to men, she made answer by installing the bed of the young Francis in her own room. And the result? Fille et filz eut, à elle obéyssans, Rempliz d’esprit, de vertuz et bon sens.[66] We can understand what deep chords were struck by this dispute between the fathers and the mothers, and what echoes it set sounding in the whole life of the women. Separated as they were from their sons by force of custom, it was natural indeed that, eager to imbue the stern spirit of men with love and tenderness, they should turn passionately to the love of their children.