This to such an extent that one day, under the second Empire, a minister, drawing out his watch, could exclaim with satisfaction, "At this very time, in such a class, all the scholars of the Empire are studying a certain page in Virgil." Well--informed, judicious, impartial and even kindly-disposed foreigners,[6157] on seeing this mechanism which everywhere substitutes for the initiative from below the compression and impetus from above, are very much surprised.

"The law means that the young shall never for one moment be left to themselves; the children are under their masters' eyes all day" and all night.

Every step outside of the regulations is a false one and always arrested by the ever-present authority.

And, in cases of infraction, punishments are severe; "according to the gravity of the case,[6158] the pupils will be punished by confinement from three days to three months in the lycee or college, in some place assigned to that purpose; if fathers, mothers or guardians object to these measures, the pupil must be sent home and can no longer enter any other college or lycee belonging to the university, which, as an effect of university monopoly, thereafter deprives him of instruction, unless his parents are wealthy enough to employ a professor at home.

"Everything that can be effected by rigid discipline is thus obtained[6159] and better, perhaps, in France than in any other country," for if, on leaving the lycee, young people have lost a will of their own, they have acquired "a love of and habits of subordination and punctuality" which are lacking elsewhere.
Meanwhile, on this narrow and strictly defined road, whilst the regulation supports them, emulation pushes them on.