Not content with reading, I performed experiments, repeating those of my predecessors, and inventing new to control their conclusions. "With my own hands I stirred the soil, fetid and palpitating with life," and in this inmost intimacy with Nature felt myself grow strong, as Antaeus by contact with the mother earth. Thus roused from my long torpor into the most intense activity,--for all activity is slack in comparison with that of thought,--I became dissatisfied with the facility of my present surroundings. I was anxious to pit myself against the world of Paris. I wanted opposition, contradiction, in order to vanquish them, and absorb their force into the glory of my triumph. Moreover, my studies had now reached a point where they required the assistance that could only be obtained in a great city: in a word, I resolved to return to the capital, for a longer or shorter time, as the sequel should prove desirable. My means rendered me independent of my _clientele_, and I left my patients without regret to the care of an easily procured substitute. It is so rare to alight upon an interesting case in the country! Nothing but rheumatism and measles, measles and rheumatism, and never an autopsy,--it is as monotonous as the treatment of fever and ague. I longed for the vast metropolitan hospitals, containing specimens of every shade of disease, and affording unlimited opportunities for auscultation. Of these I stood especially in need, for the train of thought suggested by physiological experiment must be completed by pathological researches, which could only be carried on at Paris.