Their education has all tended to one side; they have undergone no practical apprenticeship.

Never have they taken an active part in or lent a hand to any professional undertaking either as collaborators or assistants.
* The future professor, a new aggrege at twenty-four years of age, who issues from the Ecole Normale, has not yet taught a class, except for a fortnight in a Paris lycee.
* The future engineer who, at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age leaves the Ecole Centrale, or the Ecole des Ponts, or Ecole des Mines, has never assisted in the working of a mine, in the heating of a blast furnace, in the piercing of a tunnel, in the laying-out of a dike, of a bridge or of a roadway.

He is ignorant of the cost and has never commanded a squad of workmen.
* If the future advocate or magistrate to be has put up with being a notary's or lawyer's clerk, he will at twenty-five years of age, even if he is a doctor of law with his insignia of three "white balls," know nothing of the business; he merely knows his codes; he has never examined pleadings, conducted a case, drawn up an act or liquidated an estate.
* From eighteen to thirty, the future architect who competes for a prix de Rome may stay in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, draw plan after plan there, and then, if he obtains the prix, pass five years at Rome, make designs without end, multiply plans and restorations on paper, and at last, at thirty-five years of age, return to Paris with the highest titles, architect of the government, and with the aspiration to erect edifices without having taken even a second or third part in the actual construction of one single house .-- None of these men so full of knowledge know their trade and each, at this late hour, is expected to act as an expert, improvising,[6369] in haste and too fast, encountering many drawbacks at his own expense and at the expense of others, along with serious risks for the first tasks he undertakes.
Before 1789, says a witness of both the ancient and the modern regime, [6370] young Frenchmen did not thus pass their early life.

Instead of dancing attendance so long on the threshold of a career, they were inducted into it very early in life and at once began the race.

With very light baggage and readily obtained "they entered the army at sixteen, and even fifteen years of age, at fourteen in the navy, and a little later in special branches, artillery or engineering.