Calvin stayed at Poitiers with Messire Fouquet, prior of Trois-Moutiers, a learned ecclesiastic, and a friend of the Du Tillets, who had a house there. The university was flourishing, it possessed learned professors, and had a famous library. The desire of understanding—a feeling springing up everywhere in France—was particularly felt here. The prior of Trois-Moutiers conversed with his two guests on the public disputations that were going on in the university. This excited Calvin's attention: he went to the hall, sat down on one of the benches, and listened attentively. No one, as he looked at this stranger, would have supposed that under those pale, unattractive features was hidden one of the heroes who change the face of the world in the name of truth alone. Beneath much quibbling and idle trash the young doctor could see flashes of light here and there. After the disputation, he called upon those combatants from whom he had heard the language of christianity; he stated his own ideas, and ere long the beauty of his genius and the frankness of his language won them over. Calvin and these generous men became friends and visited each other; at length, says an historian, 'they began to take walks together without the city,'[93] and as they walked along the banks of the little river Clain, or rambled over the fields, the young doctor spoke to them openly of Christ and of eternity. They did not trouble themselves, indeed, with scholastic theology and metaphysical formulas: Calvin aimed at the conquest of their souls. He required in every one the formation of a new man, and cared about nothing else. In the midst of the disheartening weaknesses and immense necessities of fallen humanity, a great spiritual restoration must be carried out; the hour had come, and to accomplish the work it needed special men invested with power from on high. Calvin was one of these strong men, whom God has sent to the aid of human decay. At the moment of the awakening, after the slumber of the Middle Ages, the heavenly Father bestowed new creative forces on mankind. The Gospel, then restored to the world, possessed a beauty which attracted men's souls, and an authority which wrought in them an absolute obedience: these are the two regenerating elements. All over Europe prophets arose among the people, but they did not prophesy at their own impulse. Above them was the sovereign, free, living, supernatural God who worked in them with supreme power.