some thirty or forty of the youngest boys.

"Oh, my dear, is this what they call boarding them out in families?" gasped Cora Chadwyn. "I pictured a cottage with a honeysuckle porch!"

The "Colonie" is entirely for boys. They are admitted from the age of eight years, and usually remain till they enter the army, unless they manage to run away or to die, or, a rare contingency, they are freed before the end of the term by a parent or guardian so anxious for the absent one's society that he is ready to pay for it.

"This is the refectory," our guide announced, showing us with evident pride a dismal, bare room, closely packed with narrow benches and tables, the bare walls decorated with two or three large maps, like a very dreary class-room.

The motherly body in a Touraine cap shook her head and sighed. "It is not too gay-the poor little ones." But the father of the small boy pointed out the maps to his wife as an excellent idea for improving the shining hour. "In this manner no time is lost if the boy has a right spirit and desires to improve himself," said he. His wife vouchsafed no reply; I think she regarded him as rather a boring person, she herself being of the easy-going type. We next mounted by an outside staircase to the dormitory. If the refectory was dismal it became lively as compared with this sinister-looking apartment. A double avenue of posts ran down the centre of the room, and from the walls were suspended rows of white canvas bags. No sign of a bed, or of any article of furniture whatever.

"Where do they sleep?" I asked, looking with dismay at the double row of posts down the centre of the room.

"Ah, but they sleep in the hammocks, of course," said our guide, taking one of the white canvas bags hanging from LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI

1654

the walls and slinging it across to a post. "No pillows are necessary, you see; but in winter they have a small mattress and a cover of wool; in summer a sheet suffices."

"Admirably well arranged," remarked the lady of the victoria.

"Very bad for growing children," observed Cora decidedly. "They cannot stretch their limbs. Why, they have had to give them up on the trainingships in England."

"We are not in England but in France, Madame," answered the father of Family G, in superior tones. The lady of the victoria gave him an approving grunt.

Each little fellow had a shelf in the wall near his hammock marked with his name. On this were kept his second pair of boots and his few poor possessions-sometimes a mother's photograph, sometimes a crucifix or small picture of a saint-unspeakably pathetic. The boots were enormous wooden sabots, bound with iron, and weighing like lead. I asked why they were made with so much iron. "They are boots of penitence," I was told, "and no others are worn at Mettray." From eight to eighteen boots of penitence, because, when starving, you stole a herring or a loaf of bread, as directed by your parents probably! How curiously are punishments made to fit crimes in this world.

At one end of the room, in large black letters on the whitewashed wall, was inscribed the text:

Chaque arbre qui ne produit pas le

fruit, on le découpe et on le brûle.

The motherly body in a Touraine cap wiped her eyes and murmured softly in French another text, "Let the little ones come unto Me." Cora overheard her, and whispering, "Yes, yes, my dear Madame, that is more like it," slipped her arm inside that of the motherly one. But the father of the small boy

pointed to the text exultingly, and complimented the family-chief on his admirable device, clearly thinking the words were his own, and written for the occasion.

Save for the posts, the bags, and the small shelves the room was bare. "Home, sweet home," ejaculated Cora Chadwyn, "what a memory of childhood's happy days for these young ones!"

"Is there any woman in the house?" she asked our conductor, determined not to be snubbed. She was told that in these families there are no mothers. "It is I who care for themmake them to rise-make them to eatand make them to unclothe and go to bed at night," said the chef de famille, with conscious satisfaction in his own suitability. He was not a brutal or ill-natured looking man, but one could see he loved rule and rules to the exclusion of everything else in life.

There was no play-room and no kitchen in this home. Why should there be? "One is not here to amuse one's self," as the family-chief observed when we exclaimed at the way the day was parcelled out, for these little boys the same as for the elder ones! The young man with a notebook asked for details, and the following were supplied by our guide:

Rise at twenty minutes to five in summer; in winter half-past five. After a bowl of soup and bread, work till 11 o'clock on the farm or in the fields. From 11 to 1 o'clock lessons in the big class-room, which we were presently shown. At one o'clock dinner, consisting of soup, bread and vegetables, and twice a week meat. Till two o'clock recreation. After this solitary hour's respite, the only one in the day, work, divided between lessons in the schoolhouse and labor on the farm till seven o'clock, when soup for the third time, and to sleep in the cramped canvas hammock. But at all events

one felt glad to think the poor child was at last freed from his iron-bound boots of penitence. Oh, those awful boots!

The class-room was a separate building, large and airy, the names of good boys inscribed on certificates round the walls, a comparatively cheerful place in spite of its atmosphere of unflagging discipline; but the chapel with its narrow, wooden benches maintained the same principle as the refectory and dormitory, that one was not at the "Colonie" to amuse one's self.

It was in the chapel that our guide pointed out the ingenious arrangement by which the occupants of the "Maison Paternelle" could hear the "Messe" without themselves attending-the same wall serving for both buildings. "I will show you presently how admirably all that is arranged," said our guide.

Walking round the farm and dairies we saw many of the small boys at their various works, feeding the cows, filling the milk-cans, cutting and binding the long stalks and evil-smelling flax. Some were out in the vineyards gathering in the grapes-happy ones those! Others less fortunate labored hard in the big washhouse, under the supervision of two severe-looking nuns. For ten of the Dames Blanches are employed in the "Colonie" to direct the work of the kitchen, the laundry, and the infirmary, but under strict injunction not for an instant to relax discipline or show too human a side to the "badly turned."

The nuns in the wash-house appeared to be specially picked to fulfil these conditions, and looked about as likely to be overtaken by an access of injudicious sympathy as the Egyptian Sphinx. The boys were working with a dogged, savage intentness of purpose, twisting and scrubbing, and beating the clothes as though they represented effigies of their dearest foes, which no

doubt some of them did. "Sister Helen" must have looked just so," remarked my friend, "as she held the wax figure of her false lover over the fire."

A great number of cows are kept, and a large trade done in milk and butter, but the ox that treads out the corn is closely muzzled; no milk or butter is he allowed.

"What will you?" said the familychief in answer to Mrs. Chadwyn's remark that surely they gave the boys the skim milk. "One gives them soup three times a day; they are well nourished. This is not a hospital for the little Rothschilds."

"The soup is of course the most suitable.

Me, I find all this very well-arranged," observed the lady of the victoria pointedly.

While the rest of the party were being conducted through the cowhouses I spoke to one little fellow washing out milk-cans. He was small and frail, with a set white face, full of dogged determination. His ankles were SO thin they threatened to snap in two any moment from the weight of his "boots of penitence." He looked twelve years old at the most, but told me he was seventeen next month. (The under-sized were conspicuous, no doubt owing to the cramped hammocks.)

"Then you will soon leave school and go to be a soldier," I said hopefully, and smiled.

He gave an expressive shrug to his little thin shoulders, indicating small hope in that prospect.

Poor little fellow, after all, will it be much better? Georges Darien's account of the life of a piou-piou (private) is not encouraging, and to have been at the "Colonie" is to be branded une mauvaise tête, un enfant mal tourné, even though the offence which sent you there was of the slightest and your years of the tenderest.

I dared not say more to my little

The

friend, for the family-chief was in sight, followed by the inspecting party, and I feared to get him into trouble. As I joined the rest I noticed darts of animosity passing between Mrs. Cora Chadwyn and the victoria lady. party looked gloomy; perhaps the sight of so many exceedingly well-cared-for cows had depressed them; even the small boy, though busily eating sweets, seemed in low spirits. Only the guide appeared thoroughly pleased with life.

"And now, messieurs et mesdames," said he, with the air of one who has kept his good wine till the last, "we will visit the 'Maison Paternelle.'"

As we followed he explained to us the idea of this admirable institution about which I could see Cora Chadwyn was beginning to have misgivings.

"Here one receives the young people, sons of rich parents, from the age of twelve years to twenty-one, whose relations cannot force them to be obedient and to conduct themselves well. The majority are those who refuse to work and follow their classes-the lazy, idle boy, who obstinates himself against study. There are, of course, also the cases of immoral conduct, but the most part are the idle ones."

We were greeted at the entrance with a frontage of iron bars enclosing the portico, over which, in large letters, we read the alluring name of the building, "Maison Paternelle." No bell was rung; our guide noiselessly inserted a gigantic key. and we entered a large hall. A long row of locked doors greeted us on each side, and a gallery running round the top of the hall repeated the same thing. "These are their rooms," said our guide in an awful whisper. "They are shut up in there now-they must not hear us."

Cora clutched me by the arm. "Do they never come out?" she gasped. This gruesome hall oppressed one with a sense of doom and despair quite indescribable. No windows, no air from

the skylight overhead. No hope for those who enter that "fathers' house," was the feeling that overpowered one. "They are permitted to go out only in charge of a keeper for one hour in the day, but I will show you how one has arranged well for them," he added. "There is, I believe, one room vacant at the moment, so we can enter."

Two figures flitted rapidly and noiselessly across the end of the gallery. A door opened and shut on one of them. Our guide signed to the keeper and he dropped a big key into his hand, pointing to one of the locked doors near us, which our guide proceeded to open.

A small bare cell, just big enough to contain the narrow bed, small writingtable, two chairs, and a minute chest of drawers and washstand. Iron bars enclosed the window, a padlock and chain enabled the door to be opened about four inches when required.

"You see," our guide showed us, "by this means they hear the 'Messe' in the chapel without quitting their rooms -the wall of the Paternal House is that also of the chapel. An excellent idea, hein?"

In these cells, he told us, the boys live day and night, for two, three, sometimes for six or seven years. Professors come from Tours and give their instruction at the small writing-table. Their food is brought there, and even the service of the "Messe" reaches them without their seeing a living soul or leaving their room.

Once a month they take a bath, more often if the relations are willing to pay extra for it. They are escorted to the bath by a guardian. Never for a moment does he lose sight of his charge. These attendants are constantly changed in order to run no risk of an intimacy springing up, and bribes and corruption becoming possible. The isolation of each boy is so thorough that two brothers were once there together for over two years without ever knowing it.

The silence is as complete as the solitude, no one speaking above a whisper, but there have been occasions, we were given to understand, when the stillness has been broken by voices of despair and indignation echoing loudly round the grim hall on the arrival of

some newcomer.

Cora murmured in my ear, "I want to shout all the time. Don't be surprised if I do presently. I want all these poor darlings behind the locked doors to know they have got a friend." I was wondering whether any of the unfortunate prisoners had mothers, and what they looked like, and why they had not razed this parental establishment to the ground, when the victoria lady pushed past me into the empty cell. She looked round approvingly. "Ah, but they have here all they need," she observed to the guide.

"They have even more than they need, it appears to me, madame," said Mrs. Chadwyn, a dangerous light in her eye.

"Ha! you say there is too much furniture?" inquired the lady pleasantly. "Too much, yes, madame, in the matter of bars and bolts."

"Ah, but all that is very necessary, or they would surely escape. They have no scruples, no gratitude, those bad boys there. Me I know them You, madame, evidently lack experience." "Sch- Silence, I beg you, mesdames, until we go out," said the guardian; and I dragged Cora from the explosive vicinity of this lady, but she kept up a subterranean murmur, reminding me forcibly of the sounds I heard on Vesuvius one evening just before a terrible volcanic eruption.

I knew now what the mothers of the boys here looked like. The old body in a Touraine cap was weeping freely and sighing, "Ah, my God, the poor children!" We had both types of French mother.

The price for the privilege of placing your son under this parental roof is £12 a month, all instruction being extra. Any infringement of the intricate network of rules and regulations meets with prompt punishment of such a nature as to offer little encouragement to a repetition of the offence.

The priest is permitted to visit the cells and try his hand on the stony ground, under direction of the committee, but neither he nor the professors nor attendants are told the names of the boys. They are known only by the number on their cell door. The reason for this is that their sojourn at the Parental House may not tell against them in after life. "Their friends suppose them to be en voyage, or in an English or German family, learning the language. One invents a little romance, see you," said our guide.

He imparted all this information in a hoarse whisper, looking round cautiously at the closed doors on every side.

We breathed more freely when we got outside again. The small boy shot out like a stone from a sling directly the doors were opened.

"Ha, he is much impressed, the little one," laughed his father. "It is well to show them such an institution; it gives to think."

"It does indeed, sir," said Mrs. Chadwyn, and inquired in a compressed voice of the guide whether it was difficult to enter a candidate for this place. He assured her by no means, all that was necessary being for two relations, a parent or guardian being one, to send a signed request to a magistrate. permission granted six months only, but this could be renewed half-yearly up till the time the boy was of age, or had at least passed all his examinations and taken his baccalauréat at eighteen.

The

Like all gentlemen of the tribe of Bumble, his powers of perception were

limited, and elementary. Thinking the question implied personal interest, he hastened guilelessly to assure her. "It is rare that this system succeeds not. Madame will be satisfied with the result, I can promise. Even if her son has the head of a calf one finds the means to make some instruction to enter."

"Thank you, Monsieur. I would sooner far place a son of mine in his coffin than in this house," replied the mother of two fine sons of the glorious Stars and Stripes.

Her

Bumble gasped as if he had received a blow on the chest. The victoria lady laughed scornfully, and said something aside to the young man with a notebook. That laugh was just the last straw to Mrs. Chadwyn's overcharged soul. She did not drop down under the weight of it, she rose like a flame and burnt that last straw to a cinder. Linking her arm within that of her friend of the Touraine cap, she addressed the company, sure at least of the support and sympathy of one. French, without being fluent, is careful, well-chosen, and very emphatic. "I am an American woman and a mother. You, Monsieur, of course, are neither," she turned to the family-chief, whose Bumbledom was beginning to reassert itself in swelling chest and inflated cheeks. "You are an official, and you take your orders from your superiors, you do but your duty; it is no more a question of heart with you than with an automobile, which obeys the hand of the chauffeur." Bumble looked a trifle uncertain of this compliment. "But I see before me three ladies who are, I conclude, probably mothers-to them I make my protest, to them I cry in the name of the young ones we have seen to-day-the children of the poor, and also the children of the rich, the unhappy inmates of that sombre prison. I speak from a full experience; I have brought up forty boys and girls!"