Notwithstanding all his difficulties, Michelet finished his studies at college quickly and well. He then looked out for the means of living; would not live by his pen; began giving lessons in languages, philosophy, and history, and seems to have been fortunate enough to find sufficient employment. He would not live by his pen, for he thought, he says, with Rousseau, "that literature should be the reserved treasure, the fair luxury and inner flower of the spirit," as if, when it is all these fine things, it could not be a ministering angel too. In 1821, he was made professor in a college (a college in France, be it remarked, generally corresponds to our public school). In 1827, two of his works, which appeared at the same time, his "Choice Works of J.B. Vico," and his "Summary of Modern History," procured him a professorship in the Normal School. "This I quitted with regret in 1837, when the eclectic influence was dominant in it. In 1838, the Institute and the Collége de France having both named me as their candidate, I obtained the chair I now occupy," that of professor of history in the Collége de France--a position similar to that of professor in our universities. From his teaching, Michelet says he found the happiest results. "If, as an historian, I have a special merit which maintains me beside my illustrious predecessors, I owe it to teaching, which to me was friendship. These great historians have been brilliant, judicious, profound; but I, over and above, have loved." He should have added that, besides having loved much, he had also hated much; and that if as an historian he has "a special merit" in the eyes of those whose partisan he is, he owes it to the fierce animosity he shows to their opponents. Michelet married young. He tells us no more of his mother. His father, however, it appears, survived till 1846, and so had the satisfaction of seeing his hopes of his son realized. The death of this parent is thus alluded to in the preface to the "History of the Revolution:" "And as every thing is of a mixed nature in this life, at the moment when I was so happy in renewing the tradition of France, my own was broken up forever. I have lost him who so often told me the story of the Revolution--him who was to me at once the image and the venerable witness of the great age: I mean the eighteenth century; I have lost my father, with whom I had lived all my life, eight-and-forty years." And then immediately follows a passage, part of which we quote, as well exemplifying Michelet's style and mode of thought: "When this happened, I was looking, I was elsewhere, I was realizing hastily this work so long dreamed of, I was at the foot of the Bastile, I was taking the fortress, I was planting on its towers the immortal flag. This blow came upon me, unexpected, like a bullet from the Bastile."