CHAPTER I. BOOKS. ONE pleasant August day, fifty-five years ago, in a quiet chamber in Paris, sat a pale and thoughtful woman. The chamber was decidedly French, the furniture dating back, it may be, to the days of Louis Quatorze; yet there was something in its atmosphere not quite in keeping. Perhaps it was the books and pictures, both of which were German, or it might have been the lady herself, who was also German. She was not beautiful; her figure was a little crooked, but the contour of her head was fine, and her eyes were remarkably brilliant. Indeed, her eyes were too brilliant, large and lustrous, as is often the case with those who are, or have been, ill. That this lady was ill, could be seen at a glance. Being a wife and mother she had known all the pains and pleasures of woman. She knew what it was to give birth to children, and to have her children die. A few months before she had given birth to a daughter, her fifth child, who soon died. It was this that made her pale and thoughtful. On the couch beside her lay a book, which she had just been reading, a German book, the work of Goethe, or Schiller. Beside her was a bundle of letters, one with a foreign post mark. It was directed to her husband, 308 FRAU CAROLINE IN PARIS. William Von Humboldt. The lady was Frau Caroline, and the letter was from Alexander. It was dated in March, at Havana, and announced his speedy return from the New World. Two or three months had passed since it was received in Rome, and yet there were no tidings of him. None, at least, that they wished to believe. There was at one time an ugly report that he had died of the yellow fever, but it lacked confirmation, they thought. So Frau Caroline, who had been spending a few weeks at Weimar, with her friend Schiller, had come up to Paris to see if she could not learn something definite concerning the long-absent Alexander. While she was sitting there with his letter before her, that pleasant August day, there came a tap at the door, and a note was handed her by a messenger. It was from the Secretary of the National Institute, announcing the arrival of the traveller in the Garonne. He was then at Bordeaux, and would shortly be in Paris. Her heart was lightened of one load; her pale cheek kindled, and snatching a pen, she wrote the good news to her husband. In a few days Alexander himself appeared. From time to time during his five years' absence, rumours of his travels were noised abroad, and he was much talked about, not only by scientific men, who naturally felt a deep interest in him and his pursuits, but by the world at large. Great changes had been wrought since he left; battles had been fought, before which the famous fields of antiquity must "pale their ineffectual fires:" empires had risen and fallen, or were tottering to their fall, yet he was not forgotten. The crash of empires, the thunder of battles had not drowned the "still small HUMBOLDT'S COLLECTIONS. 309 voice" of Science, and the name of its most distinguished votary, Alexander Von Humboldt. He returned to find himself famous. He was warmly welcomed by the savans of Paris, The collections which he had brought from the New World were richer than any that had ever before been brought into Europe from foreign countries. Other travellers, selecting some specialité, with which they parti cularly sympathized, had enriched different departments of science, but Humboldt and Bonpland, universal in their tastes and pursuits, enriched all. Botany, geology, mineralogy, geography, climate-they left nothing untouched. Their collections and journals contained the natural history of a continent. They had achieved a great triumph by their travels, but its fruit was yet to come. As they had travelled for the interests of science rather than their own private gratification, for the world rather than themselves, it was necessary that the world should know the results of their travels. For themselves it was not necessary, for they could recall them day by day, and step by step, without even turning to their jour nals. The rocks and ores in their cases, the plants in their herbals, were dumb historians of their progress. Even their mirrors were tell-tales, whispering, as they reflected their sun-bronzed faces, the gorgeous secret of the tropics. Of this, however, the world could know nothing. They might, as they afterwards did, deposit their collections in Museums of Natural History. This would be something towards making known the results of their five years' sojourn in the New World, but it would not be much after all. By this means they might reach the scientific and the curious, but not the world. |