On holidays he pushed his burly body through the woods near Scandiano, and came wide-eyed upon foaming natural fountains. These made him stop his romping, and caused him to go home sunk in unboyish thought. What caused these fountains? His folks and the priest had told him they had sprung in olden times from the tears of sad, deserted, beautiful girls who were lost in the woods.... Lazzaro was a dutiful son--and a politician of a son--so he didn’t argue with his father or the priest. But to himself he said “bunk” to their explanation, and made up his mind to find out, some day, the real why and wherefore of fountains. Young Spallanzani was just as determined as Leeuwenhoek had been to find out the hidden things of nature, but he set about getting to be a scientist in an entirely different way. He pondered: “My father insists that I study law, does he?” He kept up the pretense of being interested in legal documents--but in every spare moment he boned away at mathematics and Greek and French and Logic--and during his vacations watched skipping stones and fountains, and dreamed about understanding the violent fireworks of volcanoes. Then craftily he went to the noted scientist, Vallisnieri, and told this great man what he knew. “But you were born for a scientist,” said Vallisnieri, “you waste time foolishly, studying lawbooks.” “Ah, master, but my father insists.” Indignantly Vallisnieri went to Spallanzani senior and scolded him for throwing away Lazzaro’s talents on the merely useful study of law. “Your boy,” he said, “is going to be a searcher, he will honor Scandiano, and make it famous--he is like Galileo!” And the shrewd young Spallanzani went to the University at Reggio, with his father’s blessing, to take up the career of scientist. At this time it was much more respectable and safe to be a scientist than it had been when Leeuwenhoek began his first grinding of lenses. The Grand Inquisition was beginning to pull in its horns. It preferred jerking out the tongues of obscure alleged criminals and burning the bodies of unknown heretics, to persecuting Servetuses and Galileos. The Invisible College no longer met in cellars or darkened rooms, and learned societies all over were now given the generous support of parliaments and kings. It was not only beginning to be permitted to question superstitions, it was becoming fashionable to do it. The thrill and dignity of real research into nature began to elbow its way into secluded studies of philosophers. Voltaire retired for years into the wilds of rural France to master the great discoveries of Newton, and then to popularize them in his country. Science even penetrated into brilliant and witty and immoral drawing-rooms, and society leaders like Madame de Pompadour bent their heads over the forbidden Encyclopedia--to try to understand the art and science of the making of rouge and silk stockings.