LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 77 



conception of life was a sombre one ; he said to himself 

 that the " disharmonies " of human nature must in- 

 fallibly end in a general decadence of humanity. He 

 set forth his reflections in an article entitled The Time 

 for Marriage, in which he discussed the following 

 concrete fact : With the progress of civilisation and 

 culture, the time for marriage recedes gradually, 

 whereas puberty remains as early as before ; the 

 result is that the time between puberty and marriage 

 is becoming longer and longer, and constitutes a 

 growing period in which there is no harmony. The 

 statistics of suicides prove that there is a close con- 

 nection between them and the period of disharmonies. 



Whilst he worked, his wife tried to make use of 

 her leisure : she interested herself in poor children, 

 sketched flowers, read novels . . . life flowed peace- 

 fully in spite of the underlying drama. 



Yet the thought that he was not fulfilling his 

 obligations was intolerable to Metchnikofl. He 

 thought of resigning and founding a small book-shop 

 at Madeira in order to be independent and not obliged 

 to leave his wife, but lack of funds made this plan 

 impossible. In his search for new resources, he went 

 to Teneriffe to look for a subject for an article. He 

 met with several disappointments on this trip ; yet 

 he saw the Villa Orotava, with its celebrated giant 

 dragon-tree, which had already then been brought 

 down by a storm. He also visited the Caves of the 

 Guancios, the primitive inhabitants of the Canary 

 Islands. Having gathered the necessary observations, 

 he hastened to return to Madeira, where months passed 

 without bringing any change. 



The book-shop idea was abandoned as being im- 

 practicable and MetchnikofE had to return to Odessa, 



