These were days and nights of almost superhuman exertion, but at the end of a year the desired admission to the school was obtained, and his real education began. It is customary for a student at the Beaux-Arts to select the master in whose atelier he wishes to study, and Saint-Gaudens selected Jouffroy, whose pupils in the preceding years had been particularly successful in capturing most of the prizes which were offered by the school. Here Saint-Gaudens formed several friendships which endured throughout his life, and here also he began to mingle more widely with the men in the great world about him, although his time was far too occupied for more than an occasional hour or two of relaxation. “My ambition was of such a soaring nature, and I was so tremendously austere, that I had the deepest scorn of the ordinary amusements of the light opera, balls and what not.” And yet, when he did play, his play was of the hardest. He was active beyond measure, and it is doubtless to the hours of hard physical exercise which he got at night in the gymnasium and the swimming-baths, that he owed the health which gave him the endurance necessary for his long hours in the classroom. Occasionally, walking trips, with one or two companions, gave well-deserved vacations—trips from which the walkers returned tired and penniless, but inspired by the beauty of nature in the pleasant French countryside and thrilled with the stupendous grandeur of the Alpine scenery. But now, in the year 1870, the dark clouds of the Franco-Prussian War suddenly gathered. War was declared. The streets of Paris were congested with shouting, marching crowds. The enlistment places were filled with men joining the colors. To the young American the problem of his own line of action seemed difficult to decide. Everything within him urged him to enlist under the flag of France. But he was a citizen of another land, and aged parents awaited his return. He decided to withhold his decision. Once, indeed, he returned to Paris from Limoges fixed in his purpose to join his French companions; but there he found a letter from his mother, so pathetic that he reluctantly abandoned his intention, returned to Limoges, and a few months later started for Rome.