One more friend, the headmaster of Arbois college, M. Romanet, exerted a decisive influence on Louis Pasteur’s career. This master, who was constantly trying to elevate the mind and heart of his pupils, inspired Louis with great admiration as well as with respect and gratitude. Romanet considered that whilst instruction doubled a man’s value, education, in the highest sense of the word, increased it tenfold. He was the first to discover in Louis Pasteur the hidden spark that had not yet revealed itself by any brilliant success in the hardworking schoolboy. Louis’ mind worked so carefully that he was considered slow; he never affirmed anything of which he was not absolutely sure; but with all his strength and caution he also had vivid imaginative faculties. Romanet, during their strolls round the college playground, took pleasure in awakening with an educator’s interest the leading qualities of this young nature--circumspection and enthusiasm. The boy, who had been sitting over his desk with all-absorbing attention, now listened with sparkling eyes to the kind teacher talking to him of his future and opening to him the prospect of the great _Ecole Normale_.[3] An officer of the Paris municipal guard, Captain Barbier, who always came to Arbois when on leave, offered to look after Louis Pasteur if he were sent to Paris. But Joseph Pasteur--in spite of all--hesitated to send his son, not yet sixteen years old, a hundred leagues away from home. Would it not be wiser to let him go to Besançon college and come back to Arbois college as professor? What could be more desirable than such a position? Surely Paris and the Ecole Normale were quite unnecessary! The question of money also had to be considered. “That need not trouble you,” said Captain Barbier. “In the Latin Quarter, Impasse des Feuillantines, there is a preparatory school, of which the headmaster, M. Barbet, is a Franc-Comtois. He will do for your son what he has done for many boys from his own country--that is, take him at reduced school fees.”