'I must here acknowledge, with deep regret, not only the error of a theory, which I had adopted at a very early age, when older and wiser persons than myself had been dazzled by the eloquence of Rousseau; but I must also reproach myself with not having, after my arrival in France, paid as much attention to my boy as I had done in England, or as much as was necessary to prevent the formation of those habits, which could never afterwards be eradicated.'
Edgeworth, finding that the tutor he had brought from England was not able to control his son, resolved to send young Richard to school at Lyons. The Jesuits had lately been dismissed, but the Peres de L'Oratoire had taken charge of their Seminary, and to them Edgeworth resolved to intrust his son, having been first assured by the Superior that he would not attempt to convert the boy, and would forbid the under-masters to do so. A certain Pere Jerome, however, desired to make the boy a good Catholic; and the Superior frankly told Edgeworth the circumstance, saying, 'One day he took your boy between his knees, and began from the beginning of things to teach him what he ought to believe. "My little man," said he, "did you ever hear of God?"
'"Yes."
'"You know that, before He made the world, His Spirit brooded over the vast deep, which was a great sea without shores, and without bottom. Then He made this world out of earth."
'"Where did He find the earth ?" asked the boy.
'"At the bottom of the sea," replied Father Jerome.
'"But," said the boy, "you told me just now that the sea had no bottom!"'
The Superior of the College des Oratoires concluded, 'You may, sir, I think, be secure that your son, when capable of making such a reply, is in no great danger of becoming a Catholic from the lectures of such profound teachers as these.'
This son, having no turn for scholarship, ultimately went to sea, a life which his hardihood and fearlessness of danger peculiarly fitted him for. Some years afterwards he married an American lady and settled in South Carolina.
It was, perhaps, a failure in this first experiment in education which made Edgeworth devote so much care to the training of his younger children.