The collection comprises four volumes: Volume 1: Instruction religieuse, 1848; Volume 2: Cours de desin, 1853-1854; Volume 3: Cours d'etablissement de machines, 1855-1856; Volume 4: Untitled, deals with metallurgical chemistry. Three of the volumes demonstrate the character of French technical education in the mid-nineteenth century. Their contents are the notes Fesquet took from three-course lectures and are similar in nature to the class notes taken by students in later periods. The volume on "Cours de desin" contains Fesquet's drawings of the classical architectural orders and other systems of architectural proportions. The remaining volume records a series of meetings with a clergyman imparting the basics of Catholic belief and facts in preparation for communion or confirmation when Fesquest was fifteen.