At the same time, during eighteen years, the university administration, moderating its pressure or smoothing its sharp points, operates at the three stages of instruction in tolerant or liberal hands, with all the caution compatible with its organization.

It does so in such a way as to do a great deal of good without much harm, by half-satisfying the majority which, in its entirety, is semi-believer, semi-freethinker, by not seriously offending anybody except the Catholic clergy and that unyielding minority which, through doctrinal principle or through religious zeal, assigns to education as a directing end and supreme object, the definitive cultivation, rooting and flowering of faith.

But, in law as well as in fact, the University of 1808 still subsists; it has kept its rights, it levies its taxes, it exercises its jurisdiction and enjoys its monopoly.
In the early days of the Restoration, in 1814, the government maintained it only provisionally.

It promised everything, radical reform and full liberty.

It announced that, through its efforts, "the forms and direction of the education of children should be restored to the authority of fathers and mothers, tutors and families."[6302] Simply a prospectus and an advertisement by the new pedagogue who installs himself and thus, by soothing words, tries to conciliate parents.