The Chosen Johnson, Christopher H
Becoming Bourgeois,
08/2015
Book Chapter
This chapter focuses on the education of René Jean-Marie Galles, son of Eugène and Adèle Galles. Adèle Galles was René’s teacher. She made René work hard, especially on his grammar and writing, and ...followed a schedule “rigorously,” but she also stressed “self-education” with plenty of free time for adventure. This chapter first describes René’s life at Pont-Sal before discussing his admission to the École polytechnique and to the Collège royale de Nantes. It then considers the role played by Adèle in René’s success, along with the Galles family’s response to the July Revolution. It also examines René’s turbulent years of study for the École examinations and how he integrated his families’ joys and traumas into his focused existence.
Jean-Marie’s way was paved by his uncle and godfather, Jean-Nicolas, under circumstances not at all of the latter’s choosing. For Jean-Nicolas, whose partnership with his brother had evolved by 1760 ...into separate shops and crushing good business for each, was awakened in the early hours of February 15 in that year by the clatter of the guard in the place Henri IV below, arrested without ceremony, and hauled off to the Bastille in Paris. Sartine, thelieutenant-général de police, all in making sure the new inmate from Brittany was well treated and fed, scanned his correspondence for evidence against him
