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Then, with a glance at her companion which seemed to tell him that the end of their short intercourse was approaching, she added, maliciously: "You are very well informed as to the affairs of life, for a young man who has just left the Ecole Polytechnique!" "What are you thinking of me?" he said after a moment's silence. "Tell me frankly, without disguise."
To this request his father assented, and M. Surville, who was now engaged to Laure, proposed that M. Andrieux, of the Academie Francaise, formerly his own master at the Ecole Polytechnique, should be asked to give an opinion.
But tell me, what career is best for a man to choose?" "Mademoiselle," said Emmanuel, trembling with pleasure, "Gabriel is at the head of his class in mathematics; if he would like to enter the Ecole Polytechnique, he could there acquire the practical knowledge which will fit him for any career. When he leaves the Ecole he can choose the path in life for which he feels the strongest bias.
One problem agitated, tormented him, and left him always undecided, and this problem was one of those the solution of which is not given at the Ecole Polytechnique. Jean could find no convincing reply to this question: Which of the two sisters is the prettier?
But he turns round, he smiles as he sees the haughty look of a manufacturer, who is captain in the national guard; the elegant carriage of a stock broker; the simple costume of a peer of France turned journalist and sending his son to the Polytechnique; then he notices the costly stuffs, the newspapers, the steam engines; and he drinks his coffee from a cup of Sevres, at the bottom of which still glitters the "N" surmounted by a crown.
His parents, thinking to divert his mind from abstractions to useful effort, sent him to the Polytechnic School at Paris, that excellent institution founded by Napoleon, which served America most nobly as a model for the Boston School of Technology, only the French "Polytechnique" was purely a government institution a sample of the Twentieth Century sent for the benefit of the Nineteenth.
Cyr and the Polytechnique were the nurseries of these, the principles instilled there were perpetuated in after life; and however exaggerated their ideas of France and her destiny, their undoubted heroism and devotion might well have palliated even heavier errors.
Gabriel, under the wise management of his tutor, Monsieur de Solis, worked studiously, acquired foreign languages, and prepared to pass the necessary examinations to enter the Ecole Polytechnique. Marguerite and Felicie lived in absolute retirement, going in summer to their father's country place as a measure of economy.
The Faculties of Sciences and of Letters did not train the professors for secondary education, the engineers, and so on, needed by society, because they were here met by the triumphant competition of "special schools" previously instituted: the École normale, the École polytechnique.
It happened that the count's son, having left the Ecole Polytechnique rather low in his class, was appointed, as a favor, sub-lieutenant in a regiment of cavalry commanded by the Duc de Maufrigneuse.
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