At the age of nine he was sent to Paris to study as a scholarship student at the Collège des Grassins. He worked hard, although one of his most contemptuous epigrams reads: "What I learned I no longer know; the little I still know, I guessed" (""Ce que j'ai appris je ne le sais plus; le peu que je sais encore, je l'ai deviné."") He was a brilliant though dreamy student. When the principal of the College promised him a stipend, he replied that he could not accept because he preferred honour to honours: ""J'aime l'honneur et non les honneurs"".