"Nay, madam, what good would that do him?" he answered. "Assuredly, the only entertaining and useful history is that of the passing hour. All ancient history, as one of our clever writers has observed, is admitted to consist of nothing but fables, and for us moderns it is an inextricable chaos. What does it matter to the young gentleman, your son, if Charlemagne instituted the twelve Paladins of France, or if his successor had an impediment in his speech?"
"Nothing was ever more wisely said!" exclaimed the tutor. "The minds of children are smothered under a mass of useless knowledge, but of all sciences, that which seems to me the most absurd, and the one best adapted to extinguish every spark of genius, is geometry. That ridiculous science concerns itself with surfaces, lines, and points which have no existence in nature. In imagination a hundred thousand curved lines may be made to pass between a circle and a straight line which touches it, although in reality you could not insert as much as a straw. Geometry, indeed, is nothing more than a bad joke."
The marquis and his lady did not understand much of the meaning of what the tutor was saying, but they quite agreed with him. "A nobleman like his Lordship," he continued, "should not dry up his brain with such unprofitable studies. If, some day, he should want one of those sublime geometricians to draw a plan of his estates, he can have them measured for money. If he should wish to trace out the antiquity of his lineage, which goes back to the most remote ages, all he will have to do will be to send for some learned Benedictine. It is the same with all the other arts. A young lord born under a lucky star is neither a painter, nor a musician, nor an architect, nor a sculptor, but he may make all these arts flourish by encouraging them with his generous approval. Doubtless it is much better to patronize than to practice them. It will be quite enough if my lord the young Marquis has taste; it is the part of artists to work for him, and thus there is a great deal of truth in the remark that people of quality (that is, if they are very rich), know everything without learning anything, because, in point of fact and in the long run, they are masters of all the knowledge they can order and pay for."
The agreeable ignoramus then resumed his part in the conversation, and said:
"You have well remarked, madam, that the great end of man's existence is to succeed in society. Is it, forsooth, any aid to the attainment of this success to have devoted one's self to the sciences? Does any one ever think in select company of talking about geometry? Is a gentleman ever asked what star rises to-day with the sun? Does any one at the supper-table ever want to know if Clodion, the Long-Haired, crossed the Rhîne?"
"No, indeed!" exclaimed the marchioness de la Jeannotiere, whose charms had been her passport into the world of fashion, "and my son must not stifle his genius by studying all that trash. But, after all, what is he to be taught? For it is a good thing that a young lord should be able to shine when occasion offers, as my noble husband has said. I remember once hearing an abbé remark that the most entertaining science was something the name of which I have forgotten—it begins with a B."
"With a B, madam? It was not botany, was it?"
"No, it certainly was not botany that he mentioned; it began, as I tell you, with a B, and ended in onry."
"Ah, madam, I understand! It was blazonry, or heraldry. That is indeed a most profound science. But it has ceased to be fashionable since the custom has died out of having one's coat of arms painted on one's carriage doors; it was the most useful thing imaginable in a well-ordered state. Besides, that line of study would be endless, for at the present day there is not a barber who is without his armorial bearings, and you know that whatever becomes common loses its attraction."
Finally, after all the pros and cons of the different sciences had been examined and discussed, it was decided that the young marquis should learn dancing.