Jean's life at the Jesuit school, where he was sent to study, was more
pleasant. At first the Fathers pampered the lad whose intelligence
astonished them. But despite their efforts, they could not induce him
to concentrate on studies requiring discipline. He nibbled at various
books and was precociously brilliant in Latin. On the contrary, he was
absolutely incapable of construing two Greek words, showed no aptitude
for living languages and promptly proved himself a dunce when obliged
to master the elements of the sciences.

His family gave him little heed. Sometimes his father visited him at
school. "How are you . . . be good . . . study hard . . . "--and he
was gone. The lad passed the summer vacations at the Chateau de
Lourps, but his presence could not seduce his mother from her
reveries. She scarcely noticed him; when she did, her gaze would rest
on him for a moment with a sad smile--and that was all. The moment
after she would again become absorbed in the artificial night with
which the heavily curtained windows enshrouded the room.

The servants were old and dull. Left to himself, the boy delved into
books on rainy days and roamed about the countryside on pleasant
afternoons.

It was his supreme delight to wander down the little valley to
Jutigny, a village planted at the foot of the hills, a tiny heap of
cottages capped with thatch strewn with tufts of sengreen and clumps
of moss. In the open fields, under the shadow of high ricks, he would
lie, listening to the hollow splashing of the mills and inhaling the
fresh breeze from Voulzie. Sometimes he went as far as the peat-bogs,
to the green and black hamlet of Longueville, or climbed wind-swept