No one ever taught him to pray; but presently he discovered that too for himself. One day, when he was only six years old, his tutor gave him a Latin lesson to learn that was much too difficult for him. Etienne took the book up to his bedroom, and there, all alone, he read it over and over and did his very best to learn it. But the unfamiliar Latin words would not stay in his memory. At last he closed the book in despair and went to his bedroom window and looked out. He gazed over the high roofs of the city, away over the wide plain in which Limoges lay, to the distant mountain, blue against the sky. Everything looked fair and peaceful. As he gazed, the thought came to him, 'God made the plain and the river and the mountains. God made this whole beautiful world in which I live. If God can create all these things, surely He can give me memory also.' He knelt down at the foot of his bed and prayed, for the first time in his life, that his Unseen Friend would help him to master the difficult lesson. Taking up the book again, he read the hard Latin words once more, very attentively. This time the words stayed in his memory and did not fade away. Often afterwards, he found that if he prayed all his lessons became easier. He could not, of course, learn them without effort, but after he had really prayed earnestly, he found he could remember things better. Then one day he learned the Lord's prayer. Long years after, when he was an old man, he could still recall the exact spot in his beautiful home where, as a little boy, he had first learned to say, 'Our Father.' Etienne and his family belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. On Sundays they went to the great cathedral of Limoges; but the service there always seemed strange and far away to Etienne.[41] The music, the chanting, the Latin words that were said and sung by bishops and priests in their gorgeous robes, did not seem to him to have anything to do with the quiet Voice that spoke to the boy in the silence of his own heart. When Etienne and his brothers were old enough they were sent to several different colleges and schools. Their last place of instruction was the celebrated College of the Oratorians at Lyons. Among other things, the students of this College were taught to move so quietly that fifty or a hundred boys went up or down the stone steps of the College all together, without their feet making the least noise. Etienne tells us in his diary: 'as we were educated by Roman Catholics and in their principles we were required to confess once a month,' that is, to tell a priest whatever they had done that was wrong, and receive the assurance of God's forgiveness from him.