Fathers, the _Collége de Montréal_. The close system of the seminaries,
however, being meant for developing priests, is apt to produce two
opposite poles of young men--the Ultramontane and the Red Radical. Of
the bravest and keenest of the latter Quinet was. If newspapers were
forbidden to be brought into the College: he had a regular supply of the
most liberal. If all books but those first submitted to approval were
_tabu_: Quinet was thrice caught reading Voltaire. If criticism of any
of the doctrines of Catholic piety was a sin to be expiated hardly even
by months of penance: there was nothing sacred to his inquiries, from
the authority of the Popes of Avignon to the stigma miracle of the
Seraphic St. Francis. He was an _enfant terrible_; Revolutionist
Rousseau had infected him; Victor Hugo the Excommunicate was his
literary idol; hidden and forbidden sweets made their way by
subterranean passages to his appetite; he was the leader of a group who
might some day give trouble to the Reverend gentlemen who managed the
"nation Canadienne." And yet, "What a declaimer of Cicero and Bossuet! I
love him," exclaimed the professor of Rhetoric, in the black-robed
consultations. "His meridians do me credit!" cried the astronomical
Father.

No--he was far too promising a youth to estrange by the expulsion
without ceremony which any vulgar transgressor would have got for the
little finger of his offences. The record ended at length with the
student himself, towards the approach of his graduation, when an article
appeared in that unpardonable sheet _La Lanterne du Progrès_, acutely
describing and discussing the defects of the system of Seminary
education, making a flippant allusion to a circular of His Grace the
Archbishop, who prided himself on his style; and signed openly with the
boy's name at the bottom!