rship in the College of France, and health more than the cross
of the Legion of Honor."

Fournier was at first surprised and incredulous: he became convinced,
then alarmed. After some thought he was horribly dejected. At such a
time an Englishman becomes stolid, a German gives up utterly, an
American begins to live fast, since he may not live long; but he, being
a Frenchman and a Parisian, had alternations--first, the idea of
suicide, which means sleep; second, reaction, which is hopefulness.

He chose to react, and did it promptly. A little time, and the rooms in
the Place de l'Ecole de Medecine, opposite the bookseller's, displayed a
card stuck on the entrance-door with red wafers, "_a louer_," the hammer
of the auctioneer knocked down the comfortable furniture of the
apartments in the rue Rossini, while that of the carpenter nailed up the
well-beloved books in stout boxes, and the places that had known M. le
docteur knew him no more. None but those who have experienced the
pleasures of a life devoted to scientific research can understand how
hard all this was to him. The fulfillment of long-cherished desires, the
completion of elaborate systematic investigations, the realization of
pet theories, the establishment of new principles,--all, all abandoned
after so much toil and care. To struggle painfully through a desert
toward some beautiful height, which, at first dimly seen, has grown
clearer and clearer and always more splendid as he advances, and now at
its very foot to be turned back by a gloomy stream in whose depths lurks
death itself; to reach out his hand to the golden truth, fruit of much
winnowing of human knowledge, and as he grasps the precious grains to be
borne back by a grim spectre whose very breath is horrible with the
noisome odors of the tomb; to choose an arduous life, and learn to love
it because it has high aims, and then to give it up at once and
utterly!--alas, poor Fournier!

"Nevertheless," he said as he turned his back on Paris, "even idle
wanderings are better than dying of consumption."

Behold the student of science a wanderer--sailing his yacht among the
islands of the Mediterranean; making long journeys through the wild
mountain-regions and lovely valleys of untraveled Spain; stemming the
historic current of the Nile; among the nomad tribes, in Arab costume
riding an Arabian mare, as wild an Arab as the wildest of them; killing
tigers in India, tending stock in Australia, chasing buf