He loved a quiet provincial life; he maintained that for a studious man such a life was preferable to the excitement of Paris.

Even at Plassans he did not exert himself to extend his practice.

Very steady, and despising fortune, he contented himself with the few patients sent him by chance.
All his pleasures were centred in a bright little house in the new town, where he shut himself up, lovingly devoting his whole time to the study of natural history.

He was particularly fond of physiology.

It was known in the town that he frequently purchased dead bodies from the hospital grave-digger, a circumstance which rendered him an object of horror to delicate ladies and certain timid gentlemen.