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