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, Pluviose 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, Drome, 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 Lacuee 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.