Georges actively promoted the equality, social mobility and inclusion of his only son in high Parisian society, at a moment when economic dislocations,  
associated with the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), were again bringing on rising xenophobia in metropolitan France and its wider reaches. It was expressed in anti-noir (anti-black), anti-Protestant and other terms, all of which identified a more generalized anti-immigrant fever. Saint-Georges had already shown a talent for fencing and music while in his uncle's care in Angouleme. In Paris, he was among the first students enrolled in the fencing institute of Nicolas Benjamin Texier de la Boëssière (1723-1807), which opened on the main artery of the rue Saint-Honoré in 1759. He excelled immediately, so much so that, out of spite, Alexandre Picard de Brémond, head of a newly opened rival school in Rouen, disparaged him as 'the mulatto of Laboissière'. Georges took offence and encouraged Saint-Georges to challenge the more experienced Picard, promising his son a horse and cabriolet if he beat Picard. Held in Rouen, the match was a cause célèbre attended by hundreds of spectators from Paris, Rouen and elsewhere. Saint-Georges dispatched his rival decisively and with ease.