At the cost of a few buffets, I assumed over my new schoolfellows the same ascendant that I had exercised over my old companions at Dol. The young Bretons are quarrelsome monkeys; on half-holidays we sent each other challenges to fight in the shrubbery of the garden of the Benedictines, called "the Thabor." Our arms consisted of compasses fastened to the end of a walking-stick, which gradually led to a hand-to-hand fight, more or less treacherous or courteous according to the gravity of the challenge. We had umpires who decided if battle was to be waged and how the champions should use their hands. The combat did not end until one of the two parties owned himself vanquished. I found my old friend Gesril presiding over these engagements, as at Saint-Malo. He offered to be my second in an affair in which I was engaged with Saint-Riveul[130], a young noble who became the first victim of the Revolution. I fell under my adversary, refused to surrender, and paid dearly for my pride. I said, like Jean Desmarets[131] on his road to the scaffold, "I cry mercy to God alone!" I met at this college two men who have since become famous in different ways: Moreau[132], the general, and Limoëlan[133], the author of the infernal machine, who is now a priest in America. There is only one portrait of Lucile extant, a bad miniature by Limoëlan, who turned portrait-painter during the revolutionary troubles. Moreau was a day-boy, Limoëlan a boarder. Rarely have two such singular destinies been found at the same time, in the same province, the same small town, the same school[134]. [Sidenote: My intellectual disposition.] Although the training at Rennes College was very religious, my fervor abated: the number of my masters and schoolfellows tended to multiply the occasions for distraction. I made progress in the study of languages; I became strong in mathematics, for which I have always had a decided leaning: I should have made a good naval officer or sapper. I was born with a generally quick disposition, I was susceptible to serious and agreeable things alike: I commenced with poetry before taking up prose; the arts delighted me; I have always passionately loved music and architecture. Although disposed to be easily bored, I was capable of grasping the smallest details; gifted with a patience that was proof against anything, however wearied I might be of the subject in hand, my perseverance overcame my distaste. I have never abandoned a matter that was worth completing; there are things which I have pursued for fifteen or twenty years of my life, as full of ardor on the last day as on the first.