Carbon had to me, "He will make an excellent colleague
for us."
Upon the 29th of March, 1844, I wrote to one of my friends in
Brittany, who was then at the St. Brieuc seminary:
"I very much like being here. The tone of the place is excellent,
being equally free from rusticity, coarse egotism and affectation.
There is little intimacy or geniality, but the conversation is
dignified and elevated, with scarcely a trace of commonplace or
gossip. It would be idle to look for anything like cordiality between
the directors and the students, for this is a plant which grows only
in Brittany. But the directors have a certain fund of tolerance and
kindness in their composition which harmonises very well with the
moral condition of the young men upon their joining the seminary.
Their control is exercised almost imperceptibly, for the seminary
seems to conduct itself, instead of being conducted by them. The
regulations, the usages, and the spirit of the place are the sole
agents; the directors are mere passive overseers. St. Sulpice is
a machine which has been well constructed for the last two hundred
years: it goes of itself, and all that the driver has to do is to
watch the movements, and from time to time to screw up a nut and oil
the joints. It is not like Saint-Nicholas, for instance, where the
machine was never allowed to go by itself. The driver was always
tinkering at it, running first to the right and then to the left,
peering in here and altering a wheel there, not knowing or remembering
that the best mounted machine is the one which requires the least
attention from the man who sets it in motion.
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