When the time came for him to leave school, a conflict arose between inclination and duty. Rolland's most ardent wish was to become an artist after the manner of Wagner, to be at once musician and poet, to write heroic musical dramas. Already there were floating through his mind certain musical conceptions which, as a national contrast to those of Wagner, were to deal with the French cycle of legends. One of these, that of St. Louis, he was in later years indeed to transfigure, not in music, but in winged words. His parents, however, considered such wishes premature. They demanded more practical endeavors, and recommended the Polytechnic School. Ultimately a happy compromise was found between duty and inclination. A decision was made in favor of the study of the mental and moral sciences. In 1886, at a third trial, Rolland brilliantly passed the entrance examination to the Normal School. This institution, with its peculiar characteristics and the special historic form of its social life, was to stamp a decisive imprint upon his thought and his destiny. CHAPTER IV THE NORMAL SCHOOL Rolland's childhood was passed amid the rural landscapes of Burgundy. His school life was spent in the roar of Paris. His student years involved a still closer confinement in airless spaces, when he became a boarder at the Normal School. To avoid all distraction, the pupils of this institution are shut away from the world, kept remote from real life, that they may understand historical life the better. Renan, in _Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse_, has given a powerful description of the isolation of budding theologians in the seminary. Embryo army officers are segregated at St. Cyr. In like manner at the Normal School a general staff for the intellectual world is trained in cloistral seclusion. The "normaliens" are to be the teachers of the coming generation. The spirit of tradition unites with stereotyped method, the two breeding in-and-in with fruitful results; the ablest among the scholars will become in turn teachers in the same institution. The training is severe, demanding indefatigable diligence, for its goal is to discipline the intellect. But since it aspires towards universality of culture, the Normal School permits considerable freedom of organization, and avoids the dangerous over-specialization characteristic of Germany. Not by chance did the most universal spirits of France emanate from the Normal School. We think of such men as Renan, Jaurès, Michelet, Monod, and Rolland. [Illustration: Romain Rolland at the Normal School]