The boys were not overburdened with parental solicitude. "My mother was good-natured and indulgent, and a clever woman; our escapades did not induce her to interfere with our habits."[51] The annoyance came from another quarter. The boys had a tutor, who is described with the true d'Argenson stroke as "fou, imbécile, ignorant, libertin, et hypocrite;"[52] one of those persons who, when you have executed some very bad drawings and love them very dearly, will vent his spleen by tearing them up.[53] It became too much for mortal endurance; and when one day the tutor "advanced upon his desk," the boy received him with doubled fists.[54] From that time forward d'Argenson went his way in peace; and the little rake's progress was proceeding apace, when it was overtaken by one of those strokes of destiny which it is equally impossible to foresee and to resist.[55] He was sent to school. In 1709, at the age of fifteen, he went with his brother to the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand, which had become, under the patronage of the Great King, the most fashionable of French public schools.[56] Thither, thirty years later, he was followed by another d'Argenson--one who, in the fulness of time and the sunshine of circumstance, was to leave a record, not of maimed and weary aspiration, but of rapid, resolute achievement--Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. But the lad was busied with other thoughts. From "a man of the world who could count his conquests,"[57] he had dwindled to the compass of a mere schoolboy; and his heart was heavy over his fallen state. Occasionally the boys acted tragedies at the College; and as d'Argenson sat in the amphitheatre, pilloried in his hateful gown, a glimpse of some fair spectator whom he had known in happier days would cover him with unutterable shame.[58] But he had the tenacity of purpose which distinguished his race; his time would come; and the modest treasure he was able to amass from the savings of his pocket-money, was dissipated upon those rare occasions when he could shake off the class-room dust from his feet, and plume himself in the great world again. "Why," he asks, with that strange recurrent smile of his, "why should one laugh at such an ambition? Surely it is upon the same canvas that that of conquerors is built (bâtie)!"[59] He possessed that keen, yet kindly humour of the man who knows himself, and can laugh at himself, without ceasing to be himself.