Two words are coined, both predestined to great fortune, on the one side the "secular" interest and on the other side the "clerical" interest; henceforth, the government no longer subordinates the former to the latter and, under the ministry of M.Duruy, the direction of the University becomes frankly secular.

Consequently, the entire educational system, in gross and in its principal features, is to resemble, until 1876, that of the of July.[6334] For sixteen years, the two great teaching powers, the spiritual and the temporal, unable to do better, are to support each other but act apart, each on its own ground and each in its own way; only the Church no longer acts through the toleration and gracious permission of the University, but through the legal abolition of the monopoly and by virtue of a written law.

The whole composes a passable regime, less oppressive than those that preceded it; in any event, the two millions of devout Catholics who consider unbelief as a terrible evil, the fathers and mothers who subordinate instruction to education,[6335] and desire above all things to preserve the faith of their children up to adult age, now find in the ecclesiastical establishments well-run hothouses and protected against draughts of modernity.

One urgent need of the first order,[6336] legitimate, deeply felt by many men and especially by women, has received satisfaction; parents who do not experience this want, place their children in the lycees; in 1865, in the smaller seminaries and other ecclesiastical schools there are 54,000 pupils and in the State colleges and lycees 64,000,[6337] which two bodies balance each other.
But even that is a danger.

For, naturally, the teaching State finds with regret that its clients diminish; it does not view the rival favorably which takes away so many of its pupils.