As ever happens, we see a great life opening with great dreams. His first enthusiasms were most powerfully aroused by Shakespeare and Beethoven. The youth inherited from the child, the man from the youth, this passionate admiration for greatness. One who has hearkened to such a call, cannot easily confine his energies within a narrow circle. The school in the petty provincial town had nothing more to teach this aspiring boy. The parents could not bring themselves to send their darling alone to the metropolis, so with heroic self-denial they decided to sacrifice their own peaceful existence. The father resigned his lucrative and independent position as notary, which made him a leading figure in Clamecy society, in order to become one of the numberless employees of a Parisian bank. The familiar home, the patriarchal life, were thrown aside that the Rollands might watch over their boy's schooling and upgrowing in the great city. The whole family looked to Romain's interest, thus teaching him early what others do not usually learn until full manhood--responsibility. CHAPTER III SCHOOL DAYS The boy was still too young to feel the magic of Paris. To his dreamy nature, the clamorous and brutal materialism of the city seemed strange and almost hostile. Far on into life he was to retain from these hours a hidden dread, a hidden shrinking from the fatuity and soullessness of great towns, an inexplicable feeling that there was a lack of truth and genuineness in the life of the capital. His parents sent him to the Lyceum of Louis the Great, a celebrated high school in the heart of Paris. Many of the ablest and most distinguished sons of France, have been among the boys who, humming like a swarm of bees, emerge daily at noon from the great hive of knowledge. He was introduced to the items of French classical education, that he might become "un bon perroquet Cornélien." His vital experiences, however, lay outside the domain of this logical poesy or poetical logic; his enthusiasms drew him, as heretofore, towards a poesy that was really alive, and towards music. Nevertheless, it was at school that he found his first companion.