hin reach of them. This privilege was not granted to
Prince Patrizzi; he was stopped on the road at Marseilles and kept
there.--In this way, through the skilful combination of legislative
prescriptions with arbitrary appointments, Napoleon becomes in fact,
directly or indirectly, the sole head-schoolmaster of all Frenchmen old
or newcomers, the unique and universal educator in his empire.

III. Napoleon's machinery.

His machinery.--The educating body.--How its members come
to realize their union.--Hierarchy of rank.--How ambition
and amour-propre are gratified.--The monastic principle of
celibacy.--The monastic and military principle of
obedience.--Obligations contracted and discipline enforced.
--The Ecole Normale and recruits for the future university.

To effect this purpose, he requires a good instrument, some great human
machine which designed, put together and set up by himself, henceforth
works alone and of its own accord, without deviating or breaking down,
conformably to his instructions and always under his eye, but without
the necessity of his lending a hand and personally interfering in its
predetermined and calculated movement. The finest engines of this
sort are the religious orders, masterpieces of the Catholic, Roman and
governmental mind, all managed from above according to fixed rules in
view of a definite object, so many kinds of intelligent automatons,
alone capable of working indefinitely without loss of energy, with
persistency, uniformity and precision, at the minimum of cost and the
maximum of effect, and this through the simple play of their internal
mechanism which, fully regulated beforehand, adapts them completely and
ready-made to this special service, to the social operations which a
recognized authority and a superior intelligence have assigned to
them as their function.--Nothing could be better suited to the social
instinct of Napoleon, to his imagination, his taste, his political
policy and his plans, and on this point he loftily proclaims his
preferences.

"I know," says he to the Council of State, "that the Jesuits, as regards
instruction, have left a very great void. I do not want to restore them,
nor any other body that has its sovereign at Rome."[6128]

Nevertheless, one is necessary. "As for myself, I would rather confide
public education to a religious order than leave it as it is to-day,"
which means free and abandoned to private individu