As in the case of Claudel at the Lyceum, so now with Suarès at the Normal School, Rolland was drawn to his friend through the love which they shared for music, and especially for the music of Wagner. A further bond of union was the passion both had for Shakespeare. "This passion," Rolland has written, "was the first link in the long chain of our friendship. Suarès was then, what he has again become to-day after traversing the numerous phases of a rich and manifold nature, a man of the Renaissance. He had the very soul, the stormy temperament, of that epoch. With his long black hair, his pale face, and his burning eyes, he looked like an Italian painted by Carpaccio or Ghirlandajo. As a school exercise he penned an ode to Cesare Borgia. Shakespeare was his god, as Shakespeare was mine; and we often fought side by side for Shakespeare against our professors." But soon came a new passion which partially replaced that for the great English dramatist. There ensued the "Scythian invasion," an enthusiastic affection for Tolstoi, which was likewise to be lifelong. These young idealists were repelled by the trite naturalism of Zola and Maupassant. They were enthusiasts who looked for life to be sustained at a level of heroic tension. They, like Flaubert and Anatole France, could not rest content with a literature of self gratification and amusement. Now, above these trivialities, was revealed the figure of a messenger of God, of one prepared to devote his life to the ideal. "Our sympathies went out to him. Our love for Tolstoi was able to reconcile all our contradictions. Doubtless each one of us loved him from different motives, for each one of us found himself in the master. But for all of us alike he opened a gate into an infinite universe; for all he was a revelation of life." As always since earliest childhood, Rolland was wholly occupied in the search for ultimate values, for the hero, for the universal artist.