However, Karl Pearson is scathing about the inaccuracies in Rouse Ball's account and states: His parents, Pierre Laplace and Marie-Anne Sochon, were from comfortable families. The Laplace family was involved in agriculture until at least 1750, but Pierre Laplace senior was also a cider merchant and "syndic" of the town of Beaumont. Pierre Simon Laplace attended a school in the village run at a Benedictine priory, his father intending that he be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. At sixteen, to further his father's intention, he was sent to the University of Caen to read theology. At the university, he was mentored by two enthusiastic teachers of mathematics, Christophe Gadbled and Pierre Le Canu, who awoke his zeal for the subject. Here Laplace's brilliance as a mathematician was quickly recognised and while still at Caen he wrote a memoir "Sur le Calcul integral aux differences infiniment petites et aux differences finies". This provided the first intercourse between Laplace and Lagrange. Lagrange was the senior by thirteen years, and had recently founded in his native city Turin a journal named "Miscellanea Taurinensia", in which many of his early works were printed and it was in the fourth volume of this series that Laplace's paper appeared. About this time, recognising that he had no vocation for the priesthood, he resolved to become a professional mathematician. Some sources state that he then broke with the church and became an atheist. Laplace did not graduate in theology but left for Paris with a letter of introduction from Le Canu to Jean le Rond d'Alembert who at that time was supreme in scientific circles. According to his great-great-grandson, d'Alembert received him rather poorly, and to get rid of him gave him a thick mathematics book, saying to come back when he had read it. When Laplace came back a few days later, d'Alembert was even less friendly and did not hide his opinion that it was impossible that Laplace could have read and understood the book. But upon questioning him, he realised that it was true, and from that time he took Laplace under his care. Another account is that Laplace solved overnight a problem that d'Alembert set him for submission the following week, then solved a harder problem the following night. D'Alembert was impressed and recommended him for a teaching place in the "École Militaire".