ht or wrong? That is my business. I am not come to begin a controversy,
I am come to ask for an explanation.

--Please go on, said Marcel alarmed.

--Not liking the priests, I should have wished to bring up my daughter in
these principles. You see I am straightforward. Unfortunately, like many
other things, her education has slipped out of my hands. We soldiers do not
accumulate property, and those who have the best share, if they have no
private fortune, remain as poor as Job. We are not able therefore to bring
up our children as we intend. The State, in its solicitude, is willing to
undertake this care: we are glad of it, and we are thankful to the State;
but our children slip out of our hands; they become what the State wishes
them to be, that is to say, its humble servants, and, if they are
daughters, anything but what their father has ever dreamed.

Marcel breathed again:

--The vocation of children, he said softly, is often in contradiction to
the wishes of parents, and that is precisely the sign of the real vocation
... to shatter obstacles. Where is the great artist, the great man, the
hero, the saint, the martyr, who has not had to struggle with his own
family?

--I am not speaking of a vocation, sir, but of prejudices, of fatal habits,
of disheartening nonsense, which children, and especially young girls,
imbibe in certain surroundings. The education which my daughter has
received, has inoculated her with ideas which I am far from blaming in a
woman--I have my religion myself too--but the abuse of which I resent. I am
not then at war with my daughter because she has her own, and her own is
more receptive, but what I blame with all my power, and what I am
determined to oppose with all my power is the excessive attendance at
church and on the priest ... on the priest, above all. You are a man, sir,
and you understand me, do you not?

--I understand, Captain, that you do not wish your daughter to go to
church.

--As little as possible, sir.

--Nevertheless, as a Christian and as a Catholic, she has duties to
perform.

--What do you mean by duties?

--Why, the first elements which the Catechism prescribes.

--I do not remember exactly what your catechism prescribes, but if you mean
by that the little box where they tell their sins, that is exactly what I
absolutely forbid.

--Nevertheless a young person has need of counsel.

--Undoubtedly; but that counsel I intend to give myself.

--There is als