Back at Paris, Cyrano was sent to the Collège de Beauvais afterward Racine's college where he completed the course, under the principalship of another pedant named Grangier, who was a little more scholarly, but no less ridiculous than the first, and who figures in the leading rôle of Cyrano's comedy _Le Pédant joué_. He lived the Paris student's life, burning honest tradesmen's signs and "doing other crazy things," as his contemporary Tallemant des Réaux tells us. On leaving college he started upon a downward track, according to Lebret; "on which," says the same good Lebret, "I dare to boast that I stopped him ... by compelling him to enter the company of the Guards with me." It may be doubted whether a temporary suspension of the paternal allowance had nothing to do with the matter; and whether, after all, Cyrano felt so much repugnance to entering this company of the Guards. For this company was the famous regiment of the "garde-nobles," commanded by Carbon de Castel-Jaloux, a "triple Gascon" and a "triple brave." And his men were hardly a step behind him, all of them nobles that was an essential condition of entrance and almost all of them Gascons. Cyrano, at first in the position rather of the Christian than of the Cyrano of M. Rostand's play, by his gallantry and wit compelled them to accept him, and even won among these "braves" the title of "_démon de la bravoure_." Unable to be the most Gascon of the Gascons, he made it up by being more Gascon than the Gascons. Among his exploits the most famous is that of the fight with the hundred ruffians; for this appears to be not a dramatic creation or a legend, but history. One of his poet-friends, Linière (the name is sometimes spelt Lignière) a writer of epigram and contributor to the "Recueils" or "Keep-sakes" of the epoch, had wounded the susceptibilities of a certain "grand seigneur," who planned to avenge himself by the same method which another noble lord, in the eighteenth century, actually used against Voltaire. He posted his hundred men at the Porte de Nesle, to waylay Linière. Linière, hearing of it, came to take refuge with Cyrano for the night. But Cyrano would not receive him. "No, you shall sleep at home," said he. "Here, take this lantern" (this is M. Brun's version), "walk behind me and hold the light, and I'll make bed-quilts of them for you!" And the next morning there were found scattered about the Porte de Nesle two dead men, seven wounded, and many hats, sticks, and pikes.