It was my mother who taught me to read, for my grandmother did not know how to read. Mother bought me a cheap handy little primer and every day, for an hour, I would learn to read. I’d settle myself on my little chair at my mother’s feet, and my head would just reach the height of her knees. She could thus read over my shoulder, and when I made mistakes – something I didn’t like at all – she would correct me without stopping her work. Needless to say, I learned fairly quickly how to read.

Charles Péguy (1873-1914)
Writer and poet

“Mr. Naudy caught me by the scruff of my neck, as you might say, and with the help of municipal aid put me into sixth grade at Easter, in the excellent class of Mr. Guerrier. “He must study Latin,” he had said: the same words which today ring out victoriously once again in France. My entrance into sixth grade that Easter was filled with a sense of novelty and wonder, and when I found myself before rosa, rosae, an entire world was opened to me, an entirely different and new world – yes, those are the words to describe it, and what tender-hearted and nostalgic reminiscences they draw out of me! This Latin teacher, so long ago, never knew what vibrant flowering garden he had opened to the soul of the little child before him when he first had that child open his book to rosa, rosae. All through my high school years I was to find almost the same great paternal and affectionate goodness, the same piety of the patron and master, which I had found in all my masters in elementary school.”

Charles Péguy (1873-1914)
Writer and poet