One good obligatory coat, of stout cloth and suitable cut, a uniform for which the public authority supplies the pattern, is what should go on the back of every child, youth or young man; private individuals who undertake this matter are mistrusted beforehand.

Even when obedient, they are only half-docile; they take their own course and have their own preferences, they follow their own taste or that of parents.

Every private enterprise, simply because it exists and thrives, constitutes a more or less independent and dissenting group, Napoleon, on learning that Sainte-Barbe, restored under the direction of M.de Lanneau, had five hundred inmates, exclaims:[6109] "How does it happen that an ordinary private individual has so many in his house ?" The Emperor almost seems jealous; it seems as if he had just discovered a rival in one corner of his university domain; this man is an usurper on the domain of the sovereign; he has constituted himself a centre; he has collected around him clients and a platoon; now, as Louis XIV.

said, the State must have no "platoons apart." Since M.de Lanneau has talent and is successful, let him enter the official ranks and become a functionary.

Napoleon at once means to get hold of him, his house and his pupils, and orders M.de Fontaines, Grand-Master of the University, to negotiate the affair; M.de Lanneau will be suitably compensated; Sainte-Barbe will be formed into a lycee, and M.de Lanneau shall be put at the head of it.