Scholar Who Walks The Night Quotes

In the forty-five years since “the War” the public schools had slowly but steadily multiplied. Most communities had a log schoolhouse within “walking distance of the scholars” (this phrase was applied to an area within a radius of four or five miles). Though statutes required all children to attend school for at least eight years, few bothered to do so and it is doubtful whether more than half the children had ever darkened a schoolhouse door. The school term continued to be three or four months; many of the teachers were coarse near-illiterates who sought to instill knowledge into the child’s head by constant application of a stick to his back.

She was heading to the Palais-Royal, armed with the piecemeal knowledge she had collected from travelers through Aveyon who told her Philippe, the duc d'Orléans, had opened the gardens to the public some years before. Belle had heard tell of the exchange of ideas that occurred there, and of the bookshops and cafés tucked into the covered arcades that surrounded the gardens. She had spent long nights imagining herself there, attending salons and taking part in lively debates with a more open-minded crowd than she could find in Aveyon. Each step she took was like walking through both a memory and a dream.