to the plan
prescribed by it and for the object it has proposed, are simply a
prolongation of itself; it is the State which operates in them and
which, directly and entirely, acts through them: they enjoy therefore
all its favor and the others all its disfavor. The latter, during
the Consulate, revived or sprung up by hundreds, in all directions,
spontaneously, under the pressure of necessity, and because the young
need instruction as they need clothes, but haphazard, as required
according to demand and supply, without any superior or common
regulation--nothing being more antipathetic to the governmental genius
of Napoleon:

"It is impossible,"[6108] he says, "to remain longer as we are, since
everybody can start an education shop the same as a cloth shop"

and furnish as he pleases, or as his customers please, this or that
piece of stuff, even of poor quality, and of this or that fashion,
even extravagant or out of date: hence so many different dresses, and a
horrible medley. One good obligatory coat, of stout cloth and suitable
cut, a uniform for which the public authority supplies the pattern, is
what should go on the back of every child, youth or young man; private
individuals who undertake this matter are mistrusted beforehand. Even
when obedient, they are only half-docile; they take their own course
and have their own preferences, they follow their own taste or that of
parents. Every private enterprise, simply because it exists and thrives,
constitutes a more or less independent and dissenting group, Napoleon,
on learning that Sainte-Barbe, restored under the direction of M. de
Lanneau, had five hundred inmates, exclaims:[6109] "How does it happen
that an ordinary private individual has so many in his house?" The
Emperor almost seems jealous; it seems as if he had just discovered a
rival in one corner of his university domain; this man is an usurper on
the domain of the sovereign; he has constituted himself a centre; he has
collected around him clients and a platoon; now, as Louis XIV. said, the
State must have no "platoons apart." Since M. de Lanneau has talent
and is successful, let him enter the official ranks and become a
functionary. Napoleon at once means to get hold of him, his house and
his pupils, and orders M. de Fontaines, Grand-Master of the University,
to negotiate the affair; M. de Lanneau will be suitably compensated;
Sainte-Barbe will be formed into a lycee, and M. de Lanneau shall be
put at the