But To
Mend The Matter, Send Them Either To The Court To Serve As Pages, Or
Into France And Italy To See Fashions, And Mend Their Manners, Where
They Become Ten Times Worse."[209]
The influence of France would not be towards books, certainly.
Brave,
gallant, and magnificent were the Gallic gentlemen; but not learned.
Reading made them positively ill: "la tete leur tourne de lire," as
Breze confessed.[210] Scorning an indoor sedentary life, they left all
civil offices to the bourgeoisie, and devoted themselves exclusively to
war. As the Vicomte D'Avenel has crisply put it:
"It would have seemed as strange to see a person of high rank the
Treasurer of France, the Controller of Finance, or the Rector of a
University, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant or maker of
crockery.... The poorest younger son of an ancient family, who would not
disdain to engage himself as a page to a nobleman, or as a common
soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post of
secretary to an ambassador."[211]
Brute force was still considered the greatest power in the world, even
when Sully was Conseiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache
Deschamps had declared that the day would come when serving-men would
rule France by their wits, all because the noblesse would not learn
letters.[212] In vain the wise Bras-de-Fer warned his generation that
glory and strength of limb were of short duration, while knowledge was
the only immortal quality.[213] As long as parents saw that the honours
at Court went to handsome horsemen, they thought it mistaken policy to
waste money on book-learning for their sons.
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