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---- VI 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 society in Europe, and this tract accused Spallanzani of the nasty crime of stealing specimens from the University of Pavia and hiding them in his own little museum at Scandiano. His bright world came down around his ears; in a moment he saw his gorgeous career in ruins; in hideous dreams he heard the delighted cackles of men who praised him and envied him; he pictured the triumph of men whom he had soundly licked with his clear facts and experiments--he imagined even the return to life of that fool Vegetative Force.... But in a few days he came back on his feet, the center of a dreadful scandal, it is true, but on his feet with his back to the wall ready to face his accusers. Gone now was the patient hunter of microbes and gone the urbane correspondent of Voltaire. He turned into a crafty politician, he demanded an investigating committee and got it, he founded Ananias Clubs, he fought fire with fire.