Career
He was for some months an evangelical pastor at Salies de Béarn, but he had no pretence of sympathy with ecclesiastical authority. In 1879, he conducted a general inspection of primary education for the French government, and several similar missions followed. His fame chiefly rests in his successful organization of the training school for women teachers at Fontenay-aux-Roses, to which he devoted fifteen years of ceaseless toil.
He died on the 31st of July 1898.
A summary of his educational views is given in his Public Education and National Life (1897). He was a Christian pacifist.