He became again a member of the military household of the king. Here he found his oldest and most beloved of friends, the Count Aymon de Virieu. They had been in college together, had travelled in Italy, their fathers had shared danger together in the Royal Guard on the fatal Tenth of August. They were ever after as two brothers, one in thought, one in soul, one in purse. They continued members of the Guard till it was disbanded. Some years afterward Virieu made Lamartine acquainted with several persons of distinction whose good offices indirectly facilitated Lamartine's entry into public life. Virieu was boisterous, full of jest, and a skeptic in religion. He was through his mother, descended from Montaigne, and he had inherited that author's disposition. He quoted him incessantly. Lamartine, on the contrary, had inherited from his mother, a melancholic temperament, quiet, serious and religious. He could not bear Montaigne's skepticism, nor his salacious utterances. "Man is born to believe," he declared. "To believe in nothing is the way to accomplish nothing, and impurity in speech is a soiling of the soul." He spent a summer with Virieu and his family in Dauphiné. Their way of living was a reflection of his boyhood life at home, and brought calm and repose to his mind. Virieu afterward became serious like his mother and withdrawing from public life on account of his health, died some years later. "In him," says Lamartine, "I lost the living witness of the first half of my own life. I felt that death had torn out the dearest page of my history, and that it was enshrouded with him." Another fellow-student whom Lamartine repeatedly mentions, was the baron Louis de Vignet, of Chambery, in Savoy. They were often competitors for the prizes. Vignet gave up the profession of law and accepted a life of poverty for the sake of his mother and sister. He had been a skeptic and scoffer in religion and repulsive in temper, but watching with his dying mother, he became changed and was modest, pensive, gentle and melancholy. He had hesitated to renew his acquaintance with Lamartine during the latter's wild career in Paris, but now, meeting accidentally, the two were drawn together at once. Vignet greeted Lamartine more as a father than as a comrade, and they quickly formed a compact of friendship. As if to seal it they went together to Charmettes to visit the house where Rousseau had lived, and afterward went to Servolex together.