ad
earned and which he had invested prudently, he devoted himself almost
exclusively to his favorite studies, retaining only a practise among
friends, never refusing to go to the bedside of a patient but never
sending in his account. When he was paid he threw the money into a
drawer in his writing desk, regarding this as pocket-money for his
experiments and caprices, apart from his income which sufficed for his
wants. And he laughed at the bad reputation for eccentricity which his
way of life had gained him; he was happy only when in the midst of his
researches on the subjects for which he had a passion. It was matter for
surprise to many that this scientist, whose intellectual gifts had been
spoiled by a too lively imagination, should have remained at Plassans,
this out-of-the-way town where it seemed as if every requirement for his
studies must be wanting. But he explained very well the advantages which
he had discovered here; in the first place, an utterly peaceful
retreat in which he might live the secluded life he desired; then, an
unsuspected field for continuous research in the light of the facts of
heredity, which was his passion, in this little town where he knew every
family and where he could follow the phenomena kept most secret, through
two or three generations. And then he was near the seashore; he went
there almost every summer, to study the swarming life that is born
and propagates itself in the depths of the vast waters. And there was
finally, at the hospital in Plassans, a dissecting room to which he was
almost the only visitor; a large, bright, quiet room, in which for more
than twenty years every unclaimed body had passed under his scalpel. A
modest man besides, of a timidity that had long since become shyness,
it had been sufficient for him to maintain a correspondence with his old
professors and his new friends, concerning the very remarkable papers
which he from time to time sent to the Academy of Medicine. He was
altogether wanting in militant ambition.

Ah, this heredity! what a subject of endless meditation it was for him!
The strangest, the most wonderful part of it all, was it not that
the resemblance between parents and children should not be perfect,
mathematically exact? He had in the beginning made a genealogical tree
of his family, logically traced, in which the influences from generation
to generation were distributed equally--the father's part and the
mother's part. But the living real