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searcher, the fact finder, flashed out of his eye, burdened all his thought and talk, forced him to make excuses for God by calling him Nature and the Unknown, compelled him to show that he had appointed himself first-assistant to God in the discovery and even the conquering of this unknown Nature.

After many months he returned overland through the Balkan Peninsula, escorted by companies of crack soldiers, entertained by Bulgarian dukes and Wallachian Hospodars. At last he came to Vienna, to pay his respects to his boss and patron, the Emperor Joseph II—it was the dizziest moment, so far as honors went, of his entire career. Drunk with success, he thought, you may imagine, of how all of his dreams had come true, and then———

While Spallanzani was on his triumphant voyage a dark cloud gathered away to the south, at his university, the school at Pavia that he had done so much to bring back to life. For years the other professors had watched him take their students away from them, they had watched—and ground their tusks and sharpened their razors—and waited.

Spallanzani by tireless expeditions and through many fatigues and dangers had made the once empty Natural History Cabinet the talk of Europe. Besides he had a little private collection of his own at his old home in Scandiano. One day, Canon Volta, one of his jealous enemies, went to Scandiano and by a trick got into Spallanzani's private museum; he sniffed around, then smiled an evil grin—here were some jars, and there a bird and in another place a fish, and all of them were labeled with the red tags of the University museum of Pavia! Volta sneaked away hidden in the dark folds of his cloak, and on the way home worked out his malignant plans to cook the brilliant Spallanzani's goose; and just before Spallanzani got home from Vienna, Volta and Scarpa and Scopoli let hell loose by publishing a tract and sending it to every great man and