X INTRODUCTION 



over woods and fields, mountains and valleys. To- 

 gether they discussed rural things and the old volcanic 

 lands. Emile collected pebbles and explained to his 

 father limestone and basalt, and together they read 

 M. Appert's summaries. The neighbors saw them pass: 

 the father tall, erect and stern, with energetic, wrinkled 

 features, the son meager and little, always holding on to 

 his father's arm, hitching up to be on a level, talking as 

 they went along. "What can they find to talk about so 

 much? It must be they are going to fish for crabs in 

 the valley of the Condamine?" 



Such was the boyhood of this man. Between his 

 father and his dear M. Appert he early learned to love 

 nature and especially to look below the surface of things. 



The supreme desire of the father was to see his son 

 enter a polytechnic school and become an engineer or an 

 officer of artillery. To enter a polytechnic more prepa- 

 ration was required than could be obtained at Aurillac. 

 Clermont-Ferrand and Toulouse were considered but it 

 was finally decided that he should go to Paris, although 

 it wrung the father's heart to be parted from him. Here 

 he studied under a certain M. Barbet, who predicted for 

 him a brilliant future and was always holding up to him 

 as a model a certain Louis Pasteur, a graduate twenty 

 years earlier from the same institution and the pride of the 

 school, who had just left the faculty of Lille to take charge 

 of the scientific studies of the Normal School in Paris. 



For his pocket money at this time Duclaux had 50 

 francs a trimester. Out of this meager sum in the spring 

 of 1858 he took 35 francs for lessons in diction and for 

 drawing instruments, and for his nostalgia ordered an 

 English book, Scrope's Extinct Volcanoes of Central 

 France, which to his astonishment cost him another 

 30 francs and required dire economies but, in the delight 

 of possession, was worth much more than it cost. 



