To Jacques Lefèvre, of Étaples--better known to foreigners under the Latin designation of Faber Stapulensis--belongs the honor of restoring letters to France. His eulogist, Scævola de Sainte-Marthe, has not exaggerated his merit, when, placing him in the front rank of the learned men whom he celebrates, he likens the Picard doctor to a new sun rising from the Belgian coast to dissipate the fogs and darkness investing his native land and pour upon its youth the full beams of a purer teaching.[129] Lefèvre confined his attention to no single branch of learning. He was equally proficient in mathematics, in astronomy, and in Biblical literature and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in favor of his needy relations.[131] [Sidenote: His pupil, Guillaume Farel.] Enjoying a reputation for profound and exact learning which had spread to foreign countries, and admired even by the great humanist Erasmus, Lefèvre had drawn to him a small band of the most promising of the scholars in attendance upon the university. Prominent among these for brilliancy and fiery zeal was a student more than thirty years younger than his teacher, Guillaume Farel, destined to fill an important place in the annals of the French reformation, and to play a leading role in the history of Geneva and Neufchâtel. Farel was born in 1489, near Gap, in Dauphiny, and his childhood was spent at the foot of the Alps. Unlike Lefèvre, he belonged to a family of considerable importance in the provincial nobility. The contrast was still more marked between the mild and timid professor and the pupil in whose nature courage was so prominent an element that it often assumed the appearance of imprudent contempt of danger. [Sidenote: Devotion of scholar and pupil.]