We offer you the dishes you like best and in the most convenient order.

Don't trouble yourself about the waiters or the kitchen; a grand central society, an intelligent and beneficent agency, presiding at Paris takes charge of this and relieves you of it.
Pass your plate, and eat; that is all you need care about.

Besides, the charge is very small."[6315] In effect, here as elsewhere, Napoleon has introduced his rigid economical habits, exact accounts and timely or disguised tax-levies.[6316] A few additional centimes among a good many others inserted by his own order in the local budget, a few imperceptible millions among several hundreds of other millions in the enormous sum of the central budget, constitute the resources which defray the expenses of public education.

Not only does the quota of each taxpayer for this purpose remain insignificant, but it disappears in the sum total of which it is only an item that he does not notice .-- The parents, for the instruction of a child, do not pay out of their pockets directly, with the consciousness of a distinct service rendered them and which they indemnify,[6317] but 12, 10, 3, or even 2 francs a year; again, through the increasing extension of gratis instruction, a fifth, then a third,[6318] and later one half of them are exempt from this charge.
For secondary instruction, at the college or the lycee, they take out of their purses annually only 40 or 50 francs; and, if their son is a boarder, these few francs mingle in with others forming the total sum paid for him during the year, about 700 francs,[6319] which is a small sum for defraying the expenses, not only of instruction, but, again, for the support of the lad in lodging, food, washing, light, fire and the rest.

The parents, at this rate, feel that they are not making a bad bargain; they are not undergoing extortion, the State not acting like a rapacious contractor.