During these years of hard work at the Normal School, Rolland devoured book after book, writing after writing. His teachers, Brunetière, and above all Gabriel Monod, already recognized his peculiar gift for historical description. Rolland was especially enthralled by the branch of knowledge which Jakob Burckhardt had in a sense invented not long before, and to which he had given the name of "history of civilization"--the spiritual picture of an entire era. As regards special epochs, Rolland's interest was notably aroused by the wars of religion, wherein the spiritual elements of faith were permeated with the heroism of personal sacrifice. Thus early do the motifs of all his creative work shape themselves! He drafted a whole series of studies, and simultaneously planned a more ambitious work, a history of the heroic epoch of Catherine de Medici. In the scientific field, too, our student was boldly attacking ultimate problems, drinking in ideas thirstily from all the streamlets and rivers of philosophy, natural science, logic, music, and the history of art. But the burden of these acquirements was no more able to crush the poet in him than the weight of a tree is able to crush its roots. During stolen hours he made essays in poetry and music, which, however, he has always kept hidden from the world. In the year 1888, before leaving the Normal School to face the experiences of actual life, he wrote _Credo quia verum_. This is a remarkable document, a spiritual testament, a moral and philosophical confession. It remains unpublished, but a friend of Rolland's youth assures us that it contains the essential elements of his untrammeled outlook on the world. Conceived in the Spinozist spirit, based not upon "Cogito ergo sum" but upon "Cogito ergo est," it builds up the world, and thereon establishes its god. For himself accountable to himself alone, he is to be freed in future from the need for metaphysical speculation. As if it were a sacred oath, duly sworn, he henceforward bears this confession with him into the struggle; if he but remain true to himself, he will be true to his vow. The foundations have been deeply dug and firmly laid. It is time now to begin the superstructure. Such were his activities during these years of study. But through them there already looms a dream, the dream of a romance, the history of a single-hearted artist who bruises himself against the rocks of life. Here we have the larval stage of _Jean Christophe_, the first twilit sketch of the work to come. But much weaving of destiny, many encounters, and an abundance of ordeals will be requisite, ere the multicolored and impressive imago will emerge from the obscurity of these first intimations. CHAPTER V A MESSAGE FROM AFAR