The punishments were mainly corporal, and were inflicted so frequently that the milder professors protested. ‘The daily fustigations,’ said Mathurin Cordier, ‘disgust the children with the study of the humane letters; moreover, their skins get hardened like the donkeys’, and they no longer feel the stripes.’ It should be added, however, that the stripes were not so often inflicted for neglect of the humane letters as for misbehaviour in church. The children had to attend three services every Sunday and one every Wednesday, in addition to the frequent daily prayers at school. They talked and played, as children will, to the scandal of their elders, and they played truant whenever they saw a chance. It must be admitted to be an indication of imperfect discipline that these peccadilloes were often solemnly reviewed before the Town Council, instead of being summarily dealt with at a Court of First Instance in the head-master’s study. The Councillors, however, showed no sentimental tendency to spare the rod. They might fine offenders whom their police caught in the streets when they ought to have been availing themselves of the means of grace; but they also very generally turned them over to the scholastic authorities to be whipped. A typical case is that of two lads who were caught playing quoits on the ramparts during the hours of Divine service on a Sunday morning.
[Illustration: THE GLACIERS DES BOSSONS, CHAMONIX]
‘Resolved,’ runs the entry, ‘to hand them over to M. de Bèze, that he may cause them to be given such a fustigation as will prevent them from doing it again.’
It does not appear that the fustigations at first formed brilliant scholars. The University was, for a long time, more famous for its professors than for its pupils. Few learned men, at that period, were regarded as prophets in their own countries; and a goodly proportion of those who were so regarded had to emigrate for fear of being stoned. Many of the fugitives settled at Geneva, and taught there; and the readiness of the welcome accorded to the men who were considered suitable may be illustrated from the career of Andrew Melvill, the Scottish scholar, who subsequently reformed the Scottish Universities, and went to profess theology at Sedan. Andrew Melvill had been teaching in a college at Poictiers, and the town had been besieged by the Huguenots. Then--