His only son had just finished a successful school-course at Westminster, and was now entered a student at Christ Church.

He was still too young for the university, and Burke thought that a year could not be more profitably spent than in forming his tongue to foreign languages.

The boy was placed at Auxerre, in the house of the business agent of the Bishop of Auxerre.

From the Bishop he received many kindnesses, to be amply repaid in after years when the Bishop came in his old age, an exile and a beggar, to England.
While in Paris, Burke did all that he could to instruct himself as to what was going on in French society.

If he had not the dazzling reception which had greeted Hume in 1764, at least he had ample opportunities of acquainting himself with the prevailing ideas of the time in more than one of the social camps into which Paris was then divided.