He attended the University of Orléans from 1623 and received a bachelor in civil law in 1626, before moving to Bordeaux. In Bordeaux, he began his first serious mathematical researches, and in 1629 he gave a copy of his restoration of Apollonius's "De Locis Planis" to one of the mathematicians there. Certainly, in Bordeaux he was in contact with Beaugrand and during this time he produced important work on maxima and minima which he gave to Étienne d'Espagnet who clearly shared mathematical interests with Fermat. There he became much influenced by the work of François Viète.