As far as knowledge goes there is but little hope of it, at least under existing circumstances.

In the schools, says another witness of the reign,[6169] "the young refuse to learn anything but mathematics and a knowledge of arms.

I can recall many examples of young lads of ten or twelve years who daily entreated their father and mother to let them go with Napoleon."-- In those days, the military profession is evidently the first of all, almost the only one.

Every civilian is a pekin, that is to say an inferior, and is treated as such.[6170] At the door of the theatre, the officer breaks the line of those who are waiting to get their tickets and, as a right, takes one under the nose of those who came before him; they let him pass, go in, and they wait.

In the cafe, where the newspapers are read in common, he lays hold of them as if through a requisition and uses them as he pleases in the face of the patient bourgeois.
The central idea of this glorification of the army, be it understood, is the worship of Napoleon, the supreme, unique, absolute sovereign of the army and all the rest, while the prestige of this name is as great, as carefully maintained, in the school as in the army.