[1] And this life had only one source, one
principle: M. Dupanloup himself. The whole work fell on his shoulders.
Regulations, usage administration, the spiritual and temporal
government of the college, were all centred in him. The college was
full of defects, but he made up for them all. As a writer and an
orator he was only second-rate, but as an educator of youth he had no
equal. The old rules of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet provided, as
in all other seminaries, that half an hour should be devoted every
evening to what was known as spiritual reading. Before M. Dupanloup's
time, the readings were from some ascetic book such as the _Lives of
the Fathers in the Desert_, but he took this half hour for himself,
and every evening he put himself into direct communication with all
his pupils by the medium of a familiar conversation, which was so
natural and unrestrained that it might often have borne comparison
with the homilies of John Chrysostom in the Palaea of Antioch. Any
incident in the inner life of the college, any occurrence directly
concerning himself or one of the pupils furnished the theme for a
brief and lively soliloquy. The reading of the reports on Friday was
still more dramatic and personal, and we all anticipated that day with
a mixture of hope and apprehension. The observations with which he
interlarded the reading of the notes were charged with life and death.
There was no mode of punishment in force; the reading of the notes and
the reflections which he made upon them being the sole means which he
employed to keep us all on the _qui vive_.
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