Deaf education
From the Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe, his father sent him to live in France to obtain a high-school education under the auspices of his godfather, the Abbé Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard, who was the successor of the Abbé de l'Épée as the director of the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets de Paris. The Abbé Sicard sent him to live with the Abbé Jauffret. He completed high school at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris where he was regarded as a brilliant student, after which he dedicated himself to studying Deaf education.