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 stirred in the same direction by the same great thoughts—­coincidences which have happened in our own day on questions of geology, biology, and astronomy; and which, when the facts have been carefully examined, and the first flush of natural jealousy has cooled down, have proved only that there were more wise men than one in the world at the same time.

And this sixteenth century was an age in which the minds of men were suddenly and strangely turned to examine the wonders of nature with an earnestness, with a reverence, and therefore with an accuracy, with which they had never been investigated before.  “Nature,” says Professor Planchon, “long veiled in mysticism and scholasticism, was opening up infinite vistas.  A new superstition, the exaggerated worship of the ancients, was nearly hindering this movement of thought towards facts.  Nevertheless, Learning did her work.  She rediscovered, reconstructed, purified, commented on the texts of ancient authors.  Then came in observation, which showed that more was to be seen in one blade of grass than in any page of Pliny.  Rondelet was in the middle of this crisis a man of transition, while he was one of progress.  He reflected the past; he opened and prepared the future.  If he commented on Dioscorides, if he remained faithful to the theories of Galen, he founded in his ’History of Fishes’ a monument which our century respects.  He is above all an inspirer, an initiator; and if he wants one mark of the leader of a school, the foundation of certain scientific doctrines, there is in his speech what is better than all systems, the communicative power which urges a generation of disciples along the path of independent research, with Reason for guide, and Faith for aim.”