In sketching for the reader’s benefit, the characteristic features of the Avignon naturalist, always busy with his researches, and always on the alert for fresh discoveries, we venture to flatter ourselves that we have placed before him one of the most accomplished and attractive types of that harmonious synthesis of industry and genius, which alone is capable of engendering great achievements, and which was so ably defined by the Latin poet in the words: “... Ego nec studium sine divite venâ, Nec rude quid possit video ingenium. Alterius sic Altera poscit opem res et conjurat amice.” [56] It will be no less interesting to see by what varied and concurrent circumstances, by what personal interventions, a virtuosity and an activity so well co-ordinated were stimulated, directed and controlled, sustained and protected against all causes of deviation or discouragement. Not in vain does a man breathe at birth the air of the mountain-tops; not in vain does he live his earliest summers with the vision of the heights before him. He retains as it were a nostalgia for the heights, and a wild longing to climb them. It will not surprise us to learn that the child of the Haut-Rouergue, transplanted, by the vicissitudes of life, from the Lévézou mountains to the Provençal plains, should calm his brain, burning with the stress of study, by gazing at Mont Ventoux, and anticipating his approaching expedition to the mountain of his dreams. [57] We shall not be surprised to find that he never allowed himself to be repulsed by the difficulties of the enterprise, and that more than a score of ascents failed to produce satiety, whereas many another found his courage and his interest evaporate almost at the outset. [58] For the ascent of Mont Ventoux is a difficult task, more difficult than that of the majority of our mountains: