"Father," said Emile, "this is not simply a matter of hydrographic calculations, and you will allow me to say that your absolute confidence in the work of a specialist has led you astray. You laughed at me when, at the beginning of my general studies, I said to you that all branches of human knowledge seemed to me to be interrelated, and that one must needs know almost everything to be infallible on any given point; in a word, that no special work could dispense with synthesis, and that before learning the mechanism of a watch it would be well to learn the mechanism of creation. You laughed at me--you laugh at me still--and you took me away from the stars to send me back to mills. Very well; if, with your hydrographer, you had consulted a geologist, a botanist and a physicist, they would have demonstrated to you something that I feel safe in asserting after one view of the locality, subject to the confirmation of more competent judges than myself. It is: that, taking into consideration the slope of the ridge of the mountain over which your stream flows, taking into consideration the direction of the winds that accompany it, taking into consideration the plateaus from which it takes its source and their relative elevation, which attracts all the clouds, where indeed all the storms take rise--floods of water must constantly pour down into this ravine and sweep away unavailing obstacles; unless, as I have said, it be controlled by works which you cannot undertake to erect, because the necessary expense exceeds the resources of any single capitalist. That is what the physicist would have told you on the authority of atmospheric laws: he would have appealed to the incessant effects of the lightning upon the rocks which attract it; the geologist would have appealed to the nature of the soil, whether loamy, chalky or granitic, which retains, absorbs and discharges the water in turn. "And the botanist," said Monsieur Cardonnet, smiling, "do you forget him?" "He," replied Emile, with an answering smile, "would have noticed on the steep, barren cliff, where the geologist could not have detected with absolute assurance the former passage of the water, a few blades of grass which would not have enlightened his fellow-scientists. 'This little plant,' he would have said to them, 'did not grow there all alone; it is not the kind of spot that it loves, and you see what a melancholy look it has, awaiting the time when the flood that brought it here shall carry it away again or bring some of its friends for company.'" "Bravo! Emile, nothing could be more ingenious." "And nothing more certain, father." "Where did you learn all this, pray? Are you hydrographer, mechanician, astronomer, geologist, physicist and botanist all at once?" "No, father; you compelled me to pick up on the wing the elements of those sciences, which have a common foundation; but there are some privileged natures in which observation and logic take the place of learning."