e; he maintained that for a studious man such a life
was preferable to the excitement of Paris. Even at Plassans he did
not exert himself to extend his practice. Very steady, and despising
fortune, he contented himself with the few patients sent him by chance.
All his pleasures were centred in a bright little house in the new town,
where he shut himself up, lovingly devoting his whole time to the study
of natural history. He was particularly fond of physiology. It was known
in the town that he frequently purchased dead bodies from the hospital
grave-digger, a circumstance which rendered him an object of horror to
delicate ladies and certain timid gentlemen. Fortunately, they did not
actually look upon him as a sorcerer; but his practice diminished,
and he was regarded as an eccentric character, to whom people of good
society ought not to entrust even a finger-tip, for fear of being
compromised. The mayor's wife was one day heard to say: "I would sooner
die than be attended by that gentleman. He smells of death."

From that time, Pascal was condemned. He seemed to rejoice at the mute
terror which he inspired. The fewer patients he had, the more time he
could devote to his favourite sciences. As his fees were very moderate,
the poorer people remained faithful to him; he earned just enough to
live, and lived contentedly, a thousand leagues away from the rest
of the country, absorbed in the pure delight of his researches and
discoveries. From time to time he sent a memoir to the Academie des
Sciences at Paris. Plassans did not know that this eccentric character,
this gentleman who smelt of death was well-known and highly-esteemed
in the world of science. When people saw him starting on Sundays for an
excursion among the Garrigues hills, with a botanist's bag hung round
his neck and a geologist's hammer in his hand, they would shrug their
shoulders and institute a comparison between him and some other doctor
of the town who was noted for his smart cravat, his affability to the
ladies, and the delicious odour of violets which his garments always
diffused. Pascal's parents did not understand him any better than other
people. When Felicite saw him adopting such a strange, unpretentious
mode of life she was stupefied, and reproached him for disappointing
her hopes. She, who tolerated Aristide's idleness because she thought it
would prove fertile, could not view without regret the slow progress
of Pascal, his partiality for obscur