midnight
I wanted to pass such satisfying examinations that my place in the Ecole would be not only secure , but sufficiently advanced to release me from the cost of my support , which I did not want you to pay any longer . I triumphed ! I tremble to-day as I think of the frightful conscription -LRB- if I may so call it -RRB- of brains delivered over yearly to the State by family ambition . By insisting on these severe studies at the moment when a youth attains his various forms of growth , the authorities produce secret evils and kill by midnight study many precious faculties which later would have developed both strength and grandeur . The laws of nature are relentless ; they do not yield in any particular to the enterprises or the wishes of society . In the moral order as in the natural order all abuses must be paid for ; fruits forced in a hot-house are produced at the tree 's expense and often at the sacrifice of the goodness of its product . La Quintinie killed the orange-trees to give Louis XIV .