But there are many affinities between them; they have many traits in common, despite the points of difference between them. The illustrious son of Rochelle was born, like Fabre, with a love of all natural things, and before attacking the myriad problems of physics and natural history, wherein he was to shine by so many curious discoveries, he also had prepared himself by a profound study of mathematics. Luckier than Fabre, however, Réaumur enjoyed not only the advantages of birth, but all the material conditions necessary to his ardent intellectual activity. Fortune overwhelmed her favourite with gifts, and played no small part in his glory by enabling him, from an early age, to profit by his leisure and to give a free rein to his ruling passions. He was no less modest than the sage of Sérignan; self-effacing before others, says one of his biographers, so that they were never made to feel his superiority. (14/1.) In the midst of the beautiful and spacious gardens at the end of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he finally made his home, he also contrived to create for himself a Harmas after his own heart. It was there that in the as yet virgin domain of entomology he unravelled the riddle of the marvellous republic of the bees, and was able to expound and interpret a large number of those tiny lives which every one had hitherto despised, and which indeed they continued to despise until the days of Fabre, or at least regarded as absolutely unimportant. He was the first to venture to suspect their connection with much "that most nearly concerns us," or to point out "all the singular conclusions" which may be drawn therefrom. (14/2.) How many details he has enshrined in his interesting "Memoirs," and how many facts we may glean from this great master! He, like Fabre, had the gift of charming a great number of his contemporaries. Tremblay, Bonnet, and de Geer owed their vocations to Réaumur, not to speak of Huber, whose genius he inspired. A physicist before all, and accustomed to delicate and meticulous though comparatively simple tasks, he had admirably foreseen the extraordinary complication of these inquiries; so much so that, with the modesty of the true scientist that he was, he regarded his own studies, even the most substantial, as mere indications, intended to point the way to those that followed him. As methodical, in short, as the author of the "Souvenirs," the scrupulous Réaumur wrote nothing that he himself had not proved or verified with the greatest care; and we may be sure that all that he records of his personal and immediate observations he has really seen with his own eyes.