good Patron--who was the Ambassador at Venice--the
newly-married Rondelet determined to apply for employment; and to Venice
he would have gone, leaving his bride behind, had he not been stayed by
one of those angels who sometimes walk the earth in women's shape. Jeanne
Sandre had an elder sister, Catharine, who had brought her up. She was
married to a wealthy man, but she had no children of her own. For four
years she and her good husband had let the Rondelets lodge with them, and
now she was a widow, and to part with them was more than she could bear.
She carried Rondelet off from the students who were seeing him safe out
of the city, brought him back, settled on him the same day half her
fortune, and soon after settled on him the whole, on the sole condition
that she should live with him and her sister. For years afterwards she
watched over the pretty young wife and her two girls and three boys--the
three boys, alas! all died young--and over Rondelet himself, who,
immersed in books and experiments, was utterly careless about money; and
was to them all a mother--advising, guiding, managing, and regarded by
Rondelet with genuine gratitude as his guardian angel.

Honour and good fortune, in a worldly sense, now poured in upon the
druggist's son. Pellicier, his own bishop, stood godfather to his first-
born daughter. Montluc, Bishop of Valence, and that wise and learned
statesman, the Cardinal of Tournon, stood godfathers a few years later to
his twin boys; and what was of still more solid worth to him, Cardinal
Tournon took him to Antwerp, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and more than once to
Rome; and in these Italian journeys of his he collected many facts for
the great work of his life, that "History of Fishes" which he dedicated,
naturally enough, to the cardinal. This book with its plates is, for the
time, a masterpiece of accuracy. Those who are best acquainted with the
subject say, that it is up to the present day a key to the whole
ichthyology of the Mediterranean. Two other men, Belon and Salviani,
were then at work on the same subject, and published their books almost
at the same time; a circumstance which caused, as was natural, a three-
cornered duel between the supporters of the three naturalists, each party
accusing the other of plagiarism. The simple fact seems to be that the
almost simultaneous appearance of the three books in 1554-55 is one of
those coincidences inevitable at moments when many minds are stirr