is a secondary condition.

And the worthy man tells me what poverty in a frock coat means. Though
less of a pauper than I, he has known the mortification of it; he
describes it to me, excitedly, in all its bitterness. I listen to him
with an aching heart; I see the refuge which was to shelter my future
crumbling before my eyes: 'You have done me a great service, sir,' I
answered. 'You put an end to my hesitation. For the moment, I give up my
plan. I will first see if it is possible to earn the small fortune which
I shall need if I am to teach in a decent manner.'

Thereupon we exchanged a friendly grip of the hand and parted. I never
saw him again. His fatherly arguments had soon convinced me: I was
prepared to hear the blunt truth. A few months earlier, I had received
my nomination as an assistant lecturer in zoology at the university of
Poitiers. They offered me a ridiculous salary. After paying the costs of
moving, I should have had hardly three francs a day left; and, on this
income, I had to keep my family, numbering seven in all. I hastened to
decline the very great honor.

No, science ought not to practice these jests. If we humble persons are
of use to her, she should at least enable us to live. If she can't do
that, then let her leave us to break stones on the highway. Oh, yes, I
was prepared for the truth when that honest fellow talked to me of frock
coated poverty! I am telling the story of a not very distant past. Since
then, things have improved considerably; but, when the pear was properly
ripened, I was no longer of an age to pick it.

And what was I to do now, to overcome the difficulty mentioned by my
inspector and confirmed by my personal experience? I would take up
industrial chemistry. The municipal lectures at Saint Martial placed
a spacious and fairly well-equipped laboratory at my disposal. Why not
make the most of it?

The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder. The farmer supplied the
raw material to the factories, where it was turned into purer and more
concentrated products. My predecessor had gone in for it and done well
by it, so people said. I would follow in his footsteps and use the vats
and furnaces, the expensive plant which I had inherited. So to work.

What should I set myself to produce? I proposed to extract the coloring
substance, alizarin, to separate it from the other matters found with it
in the root, to obtain it in the pure state and in a form that allowed
of the direc