‘Claude Bridet requested permission to lodge above the Tower, where M. Chevalier, lecturer in Hebrew, used to live, for the sake of his health, and because the lower ground is damp. Decided that he must be satisfied with his present apartment, and that the place to which he refers shall be kept for someone else.’
In spite of discomfort, however, hard work was the order of the day. A letter has been preserved from M. de Bèze, the Rector of the University, to the parent of a pupil, in which he says: ‘I fear I shall be able to make nothing of your son, for, in spite of my entreaties, he refuses to work more than fourteen hours a day.’ The ordinary curriculum did not call for quite such persistent application as that, but was, none the less, sufficiently severe.
The day began, at 7 a.m., with prayers, roll-call, and lessons. At 8.30 there was half an hour’s rest, during which the pupils were instructed to ‘eat bread, praying while they did so, without making a noise.’ From 9 to 10 there were more lessons, terminating with more prayers; from 10 to 11 the scholars dined; from 11 to 12 they sang psalms; from 12 to 1 there were further lessons, inaugurated by prayer; from 1 to 2 there was a quiet time devoted to eating, writing, and informal study; from 2 to 4 there was a final instalment of lessons; and at 4 there was punishment parade in the great college hall.
The punishments were mainly corporal, and were inflicted so frequently that the milder professors protested. ‘The daily fustigations,’ said Mathurin Cordier, ‘disgust the children with the study of the humane letters; moreover, their skins get hardened like the donkeys’, and they no longer feel the stripes.’ It should be added, however, that the stripes were not so often inflicted for neglect of the humane letters as for misbehaviour in church. The children had to attend three services every Sunday and one every Wednesday, in addition to the frequent daily prayers at school. They talked and played, as children will, to the scandal of their elders, and they played truant whenever they saw a chance. It must be admitted to be an indication of imperfect discipline that these peccadilloes were often solemnly reviewed before the Town Council, instead of being summarily dealt with at a Court of First Instance in the head-master’s study. The Councillors, however, showed no sentimental tendency to spare the rod. They might fine offenders whom their police caught in the streets when they ought to have been availing themselves of the means of grace; but they also very generally turned them over to the scholastic authorities to be whipped. A typical case is that of two lads who were caught playing quoits on the ramparts during the hours of Divine service on a Sunday morning.
THE GLACIERS DES BOSSONS, CHAMONIX
‘Resolved,’ runs the entry, ‘to hand them over to M. de Bèze, that he may cause them to be given such a fustigation as will prevent them from doing it again.’