At the start, he put his own free scholars (boursiers) into the lycees and colleges, about 3000 boys[6171] whom he supports and brings up at his own expense, for his own advantage, destined to become his creatures, and who form the uppermost layer of the school population; about one hundred and fifty of these scholarships to each lycee, first occupants of the lycee and still for a long time more numerous than their paying comrades, all of a more or less needy family, sons of soldiers and functionaries who live on the Emperor and rely on him only, all accustomed from infancy to regard the Emperor as the arbiter of their destiny, the special, generous and all-powerful patron who, having taken charge of them now, will also take charge of them in the future.

A figure of this kind fills and occupies the entire field of their imagination; whatever grandeur it already possesses it here becomes still more grand, colossal and superhuman.
At the beginning their enthusiasm gave the pitch to their co-disciples;[6172] the institution, through its mechanism, labors to keep this up, and the administrators or professors, by order or through zeal, use all their efforts to make the sonorous and ringing chord vibrate with all the more energy.

After 1811, even in a private institution,[6173] "the victories of the Emperor form almost the only subject on which the imagination of the pupils is allowed to exercise itself." After 1807,[6174] at Louis le Grand, the prize compositions are those on the recent victory of Jena.

"Our masters themselves," says Alfred de Vigny, "unceasingly read to us the bulletins of the Grande Armee, while cries of Vive l'Empereur interrupted Virgil and Plato." In sum, write many witnesses,[6175] Bonaparte desired to bestow on French youths the organization of the "Mamelukes," and he nearly succeeded.
More exactly and in his own words, "His Majesty[6176] desired to realize in a State of forty millions of inhabitants what had been done in Sparta and in Athens.--" But," he is to say later, "I only half succeeded.
That was one of my finest conceptions";[6177] M.de Fontanes and the other university men did not comprehend this or want to comprehend it.
Napoleon himself could give only a moment of attention to his school work, his halting-spells between two campaigns;[6178] in his absence, "they spoiled for him his best ideas"; "his executants "never perfectly carried out his intentions.

"He scolded, and they bowed to the storm, but not the less continued on in the usual way." Fourcroy kept too much of the Revolution in mind, and Fontanes too much of the ancient regime; the former was too much a man of science, and the latter too much a man of letters; with such capacities they laid too great stress on intellectual culture and too little on discipline of the feelings.