prayers far above his age. She read to him the lives of the saints,
adding recollections suited to his capacity; and she took care to have
him with her when she visited the poor, making him the distributer of
her alms, and to do such little offices for them as he was able. He
would set by his own meat for their relief, and when he had nothing left
to bestow on them, would beg for them of all his relations. His horror
of a lie, even in his infancy, made him prefer any disgrace or
chastisement to the telling of the least wilful untruth.

His mother's inclination for a domestic preceptor, to prevent his being
corrupted by wicked youth in colleges, was overruled by her husband's
persuasion of the usefulness of emulation for advancing children in
their studies; hoping his son's virtue and modesty would, under God, be
a sufficient guard of his innocency. He was accordingly sent to
Rocheville, at six years of age, and some time after to Annecy. An
excellent memory, a solid judgment, and a good application, could not
fail of great progress. The young count spent as much of his time as
possible in private studies and lectures of piety, especially that of
the lives of saints; and by his diligence always doubled or trebled his
school tasks. He showed an early inclination for the ecclesiastical
state, and obtained his father's consent, though not without some
reluctance, for his receiving tonsure in the year 1578, and the eleventh
of his age. He was sent afterwards, under the care of a virtuous priest,
his preceptor, to pursue his studies in Paris; his mother having first
instilled into him steady principles of virtue, a love of prayer, and a
dread of sin and its occasions. She often repeated to him those words of
queen Blanche to her son St. Louis, king of France: "I had rather see
you dead, than hear you had committed one mortal sin." On his arrival at
Paris, he entered the Jesuits' schools, and went through his rhetoric
and philosophy with great applause. In pure obedience to his father's
orders, he learned in the academy to ride, dance, and fence, whence he
acquired that easy behavior which he retained ever after. But these
exercises, as matters of amusement, did not hinder his close application
to the study of the Greek and Hebrew languages, and of positive
divinity, for six years, under the famous Genebrard and Maldonatus. But
his principal concern all this time was a regular course of piety, by
which he labored to sanctify h