But here, with a firmness tempered by the most scrupulous courtesy,
Professor Vivaldi intervened.

"Gentlemen," said he, "the discussion in which you are engaged,
interesting as it is, must, I fear, distract us from the true purpose of
our meeting. I am happy to offer my house as the asylum of all free
research; but you must remember that the first object of these reunions
is, not the special study of any one branch of modern science, but the
application of physical investigation to the origin and destiny of man.
In other words, we ask the study of nature to lead us to the knowledge
of ourselves; and it is because we approach this great problem from a
point as yet unsanctioned by dogmatic authority, that I am reluctantly
obliged"--and here he turned to Odo with a smile--"to throw a veil of
privacy over these inoffensive meetings."

Here at last was the key to the enigma. The gentlemen assembled in
Professor Vivaldi's rooms were met there to discuss questions not safely
aired in public. They were conspirators indeed, but the liberation they
planned was intellectual rather than political; though the acuter among
them doubtless saw whither such innovations tended. Meanwhile they were
content to linger in that wide field of speculation which the
development of the physical sciences had recently opened to philosophic
thought. As, at the Revival of Learning, the thinker imprisoned in
mediaeval dialectics suddenly felt under his feet the firm ground of
classic argument, so, in the eighteenth century, philosophy, long
suspended in the void of metaphysic, touched earth again and,
Antaeus-like, drew fresh life from the contact. It was clear that
Professor Vivaldi, whose very name had been unknown to Odo, was an
important figure in the learned world, and one uniting the tact and
firmness necessary to control those dissensions from which philosophy