I disclosed my plan to a struggling physician, ready for any adventure that should thrust him into notoriety, bring his name before the public, and thus open the way to a prosperous _clientele_. Yet he recoiled from a project fraught with promise so sure and magnificent as mine. A hospital _interne_, flushed with enthusiasm for his first practical studies, started with horror when I divulged my ideas. Many, true Parisian _railleurs_, regarded my proposition as an excellent joke. "Allons donc, c'est une vieille blague que tu nous fais la." And all my protestations served only to increase their amusement, and their determination not to be taken in. A few eyed me suspiciously, as if they imagined I were insane, and one old bourgeois doctor had the impertinence to administer to me a moral lecture. "Young man," he said, "you are possessed by the same preposterous vanity which induced Empedocles to throw himself into Vesuvius, and Erostratus to fire the temple of Diana. I recommend a course of dry cupping to the nape of the neck, to relieve your congested and over-excited brain, and, in the mean time, a decent seclusion from society, that you insult with your absurdities." I flushed red with anger, but this last rebuff warned me that I must change my tactics. Like all reformers, I found the world too stiff and rigid for my purposes, and only harmed myself with kicking against the bristling pricks. I must turn to a new generation, to early youth, and find some mind still unformed and flexible, that I could myself submit to a far-sighted training, and cast into the mould of my own ideas. The opportunities of which my contemporaries were unworthy, I would reserve as a gracious boon for a well-initiated pupil. Two years had elapsed since my arrival at Paris, and the untiring energy with which I pursued physiological researches had begun to bring my name into notice. When, therefore, I proposed to open a course of lectures upon experimental physiology, my friends all encouraged me with flattering assurances. "A la bonne heure," exclaimed the student to whom had I once addressed my secret plans, "something sensible at last. I trust such rational occupation will purge your head of its maggots, and satisfy your aspirations for fame--" I smiled stealthily to myself. It is thus that the light world always measures the austerity of our resolutions by its own lightness!