farther from perceiving it.  A sharp division had taken place in my
nature.  By night, in arduous conflict, I led a strange mental life,
known to myself alone; by day all this was forgotten, unless--and how
rarely this happened--some conversation recalled it.

From my first step out of doors I belonged to life, to the corps, to
pleasure.  What was individual existence, mortality, or the eternal life
of the soul!  Minerva's bird is an owl.  Like it, these learned questions
belonged to the night.  They should cast no shadow on the brightness of
my day.  When I met the first friend in the blue cap no one need have
sung our corps song, "Away with cares and crotchets!"

At no time had the exuberant joy in mere existence stirred more strongly
within me.  My whole nature was filled with the longing to utilize and
enjoy this brief earthly life which Feuerbach had proved was to end with
death.

Better an hour's mad revel,
E'en a kiss from a Moenad's lip,
Than a year of timid doubting,
Daring only to taste and sip,

were the closing lines of a song which I composed at this time.

So my old wantonness unfolded its wings, but it was not to remain always
unpunished.

My mother had gone to Holland with Paula just before Advent, and as I
could not spend my next vacation at home, she promised to furnish me with
means to take a trip through the great German Hanse cities.

In Bremen I was most cordially received in the family of Mohr, a member
of my corps, in whose circle I spent some delightful hours, and also an
evening never to be forgotten in the famous old Rathskeller.

But I wished to see the harbour of the great commercial city, and the
ships which ploughed the ocean to those distant lands for which I had
often longed.

Since I had shot my first hare in Komptendorf and brought down my first
partridge from the air, the love of sport had never slumbered; I
gratified it whenever I could, and intended to take a boat from
Bremerhaven and go as near as possible to the sea, where I could shoot
the cormorants and the bald-headed eagles which hunters on the seashore
class among the most precious booty.

In Bremerhaven an architect whose acquaintance I had made on the way
became my cicerone, and showed me all the sights of the small but very
quaint port.  I had expected to find the bustle on shore greater, but
what a throng of ships and boats, masts and smoke-stacks I saw!

My guide showed me the last lighthouse which had been built, and took me
on board of a mail steamer which was about to sail to America.

I was deeply interested in all this, but my companion promised to show me
things still more remarkable if I would give up my shooting excursion.

Unfortunately, I insisted upon my plan, and the next morning sailed in a
pouring rain through a dense mist to the mouth of the Weser and out to
sea.  But, instead of pleasure and booty, I gained on this expedition
nothing but discomfort and drenching, which resulted in a violent cold.

What I witnessed and experienced in my journey back to Cuttingen is
scarcely worth mentioning.  The only enjoyable hours were spent at the
theatre in Hanover, where I saw Niemann in Templar and Jewess, and for
the first time witnessed the thoroughly studied yet perfectly natural
impersonations of Marie Seebach.  I also remember with much pleasure the
royal riding-school in charge of General Meyer.  Never have I seen the
strength of noble chargers controlled and guided with so much firmness,
ease, and grace as by the hand of this officer, the best horseman in
Germany.




CHAPTER XXII.

THE SHIPWRECK

The state of health in which, still with a slight fever recurring every
afternoon, I returned to Gottingen was by no means cheering.

Besides, I was obliged at once to undergo the five days' imprisonment to
which I had been justly sentenced for reckless shooting across the
street.

During the day I read, besides some very trashy novels, several by Jean
Paul, with most of which I had become familiar while a school-boy in the
first class.

They had given me so much pleasure that I was vexed with the indifference
with which some of my friends laid the works of the great humorist aside.

There were rarely any conversations on the more serious scientific
subjects among the members of the corps, though it did not lack talented
young men, and some of the older ones were industrious.

Nothing, perhaps, lends the life of the corps a greater charm than the
affectionate intercourse which unites individuals.

I was always sure of finding sympathizers for everything that touched my
feelings.

With regard to the results of my nocturnal labour the case was very
different.  If any one else had "bored" me at the tavern about his views
of Feuerbach and Lotze, I should undoubtedly have stopped him with
Goethe's "Ergo bibamus."

There was one person in Gottingen, however, Herbert Pernice, from whom I
might expect full sympathy.  Though only five years my senior, he was
already enrolled among the teachers of the legal faculty.  The vigour and
keenness of his intellect and the extent of his knowledge were as amazing
as his corpulence.

One evening I had met him at the Krone and left the table at which he
presided in a very enthusiastic state of mind; for while emptying I know
not how many bottles of Rhine wine he directed the conversation
apparently unconsciously.

Each of his statements seemed to strike the nail on the head.

The next day, to my great delight, I met him again at Professor Baum's.
He had retreated from the ladies, whom he always avoided, and as we were
alone in the room I soon succeeded in turning the conversation upon
Feuerbach, for I fairly longed to have another person's opinion of him.
Besides, I was certain of hearing the philosopher criticised by the
conservative antimaterialistic Pernice in an original manner--that is, if
he knew him at all.  True, I might have spared myself the doubt; for into
what domain of humanistic knowledge had not this highly talented man
entered!

Feuerbach was thoroughly familiar to him, but he condemned his philosophy
with pitiless severity, and opposed with keen wit and sharp dialectics
his reasons for denying the immortality of the soul, inveighing
especially against the phrase and idea "philosophy of religion" as an
absurdity which genuine philosophy ought not to permit because it dealt
only with thought, while religion concerned faith, whose seat is not in
the head, the sacred fount of all philosophy, but the heart, the warm
abode of religion and faith.  Then he advised me to read Bacon, study
Kant, Plato, and the other ancient philosophers--Lotze, too, if I
desired--and when I had them all by heart, take up the lesser lights,
and even then be in no hurry to read Feuerbach and his wild theology.

I met and conversed with him again whenever I could, and he availed
himself of the confidence he inspired to arouse my enthusiasm for the
study of jurisprudence.  So I am indebted to Pernice for many benefits.
In one respect only my reverence for him entailed a certain peril.

He knew what I was doing, but instead of warning me of the danger which
threatened me from toiling at night after such exciting days, he approved
my course and described episodes of his own periods of study.

One of the three essays for which he received prizes had been written
to compel his father to retract the "stupid fellow" with which he had
insulted him.  At that time he had sat over his books day and night for
weeks, and, thank Heaven, did not suffer from it.

His colossal frame really did seem immovable, and I deemed mine, though
much slighter, capable of nearly equal endurance.  It required severe
exertions to weary me, and my mind possessed the capacity to devote
itself to strenuous labour directly after the gayest amusements, and
there was no lack of such "pastimes" either in Gottingen or just beyond
its limits.

Among the latter was an excursion to Cassel which was associated with an
adventure whose singular course impressed it firmly on my memory.

When we arrived, chilled by the railway journey, an acquaintance of the
friend who accompanied me ordered rum and water for us, and we laughed
and jested with the landlord's pretty daughters, who brought it to us.

As it had been snowing heavily and the sleighing was excellent, we
determined to return directly after dinner, and drive as far as Munden.
Of course the merry girls would be welcome companions, and we did not
find it very difficult to persuade them to go part of the way with us.

So we hired two sleighs to convey us to a village distant about an hour's
ride, from which we were to send them back in one, while my friend and I
pursued our journey in the other.

After a lively dinner with our friends they joined us.

The snow-storm, which had ceased for several hours, began again, growing
more and more violent as we drove on.  I never saw such masses of the
largest flakes, and just outside the village where the girls were to turn
back the horses could barely force their way through the white mass which
transformed the whole landscape into a single snowy coverlet.

The clouds seemed inexhaustible, and when the time for departure came the
driver declared that it would be impossible to go back to Cassel.

The girls, who, exhilarated by the swift movement through the cold,
bracing air, had entered into our merriment, grew more and more anxious.
Our well-meant efforts to comfort them were rejected; they were angry
with us for placing them in such an unpleasant position.

The lamps were lighted when I thought of taking the landlady into our
confidence and asking her to care for the poor frightened children.  She
was a kind, sensible woman, and though she at first exclaimed over their
heedlessness, she addressed them with maternal tenderness and showed them
to the room they were to occupy.

They came down again at supper reassured, and we ate the rustic meal
together very merrily.  One of them wrote a letter to her father, saying
that they had been detained by the snow at the house of an acquaintance,
and a messenger set off with it at sunrise, but we were told that the
road would not be passable before noon.

Yet, gay as our companions were at breakfast, the thought of entertaining
them longer seemed irksome, and as the church bells were ringing some one
proposed that we should go.

A path had been shovelled, and we were soon seated in the country church.
The pastor, a fine-looking man of middle age, entered, and though I no
longer remember his text, I recollect perfectly that he spoke of the
temptations which threaten to lure us from the right paths and the means
of resisting them.

One of the most effectual, he said, was the remembrance of those to whom
we owe love and respect.  I thought of my mother and blind old Langethal,
of Tzschirner, and of Herbert Pernice, and, dissatisfied with myself,
resolved to do in the future not only what was seemly, but what the duty
of entering more deeply into the science which I had chosen required.

The childish faith which Feuerbach's teachings had threatened to destroy
seemed to gaze loyally at me with my mother's eyes.  I felt that Pernice
was right--it was the warm heart, not the cool head, which should deal
with these matters, and I left the church, which I had entered merely to
shorten an hour, feeling as if released from a burden.

Our return home was pleasant, and I began to attend the law lectures at
Gottingen with tolerable regularity.

I was as full of life, and, when occasion offered, as reckless, as ever,
though a strange symptom began to make itself unpleasantly felt.  It
appeared only after severe exertion in walking, fencing, or dancing, and
consisted of a peculiar, tender feeling in the soles of my feet, which I
attributed to some fault of the shoemaker, and troubled myself the less
about it because it vanished soon after I came in.

But the family of Professor Baum, the famous surgeon, where I was very
intimate, had thought ever since my return from the Christmas vacation
that I did not look well.

With Marianne, the second daughter of this hospitable household, a
beautiful girl of remarkably brilliant mind, I had formed so intimate,
almost fraternal, a friendship, that both she and her warm-hearted mother
called me "Cousin Schorge."

Frau Dirichlet, the wife of the great mathematician, the sister of Felix
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, in whose social and musical home I spent hours of
pleasure which will never be forgotten, also expressed her anxiety about
my loss of flesh.  When a girl she had often met my mother, and at my
first visit she won my affection by her eager praise of that beloved
woman's charms.

As the whole family were extremely musical they could afford themselves
and their friends a great deal of enjoyment.  I have never heard Joachim
play so entrancingly as to her accompaniment.  At a performance in her
own house, where the choruses from Cherubini's Water-Carrier were given,
she herself had rehearsed the music with those who were to take part, and
to hear her play on the piano was a treat.

This lady, a remarkable woman in every respect, who gave me many tokens
of maternal affection, insisted on the right to warn me.  She did this by
reminding me, with delicate feminine tact, of my mother when she heard of
a wager which I now remember with grave disapproval.  This was to empty
an immense number of bottles of the heavy Wurzburg Stein wine and yet
remain perfectly sober.  My opponent, who belonged to the Brunswick
Corps, lost, but as soon after I was attacked by illness, though not in
consequence of this folly, which had occurred about a fortnight before,
he could not give the breakfast which I had won.  But he fulfilled his
obligation; for when, several lustra later, I visited his native city of
Hamburg as a Leipsic professor, to deliver an address before the Society
of Art and Science, he arranged a splendid banquet, at which I met
several old Gottingen friends.

The term was nearly over when an entertainment was given to the corps by
one of its aristocratic members.  It was a very gay affair.  A band of
music played, and we students danced with one another.  I was one of the
last to depart, long after midnight, and on looking for my overcoat I
could not find it.  One of the guests had mistaken it for his, and the
young gentleman's servant had carried his own home.  This was
unfortunate, for mine contained my door-key.

Heated by dancing, in a dress-coat, with a thin white necktie, I went out
into the night air.  It was cold, and, violently as I pounded on the door
of the Schonhutte, no one opened it.  At last I thought of pounding on
the gutter-spout, which I did till I roused the landlord.  But I had been
at least fifteen minutes in the street, and was fairly numbed.  The
landlord was obliged to open the room and light my lamp, because I could
not use my fingers.

If I had been intoxicated, which I do not believe, the cold would have
sobered me, for what happened is as distinct as if it had occurred
yesterday.

I undressed, went to bed, and when I was roused by a strange burning
sensation in my throat I felt so weak that I could scarcely lift my arm.
There was a peculiar taste of blood in my mouth, and as I moved I touched
something moist.  But my exhaustion was so great that I fell asleep
again, and the dream which followed was so delightful that I did not
forget it.  Perhaps the distinctness of my recollection is due to my
making it the subject of a poem, which I still possess.  It seemed as if
I were lying in an endless field of poppies, with the notes of music
echoing around me.  Never did I have a more blissful vision.

The awakening was all the more terrible.  Only a few hours could have
passed since I went to rest.  Dawn was just appearing, and I rang for the
old maid-servant who waited on me.  An hour later Geheimrath Baum stood
beside my bed.

The heavy tax made upon my physical powers by exposure to the night air
had caused a severe haemorrhage.  The excellent physician who took charge
of my case said positively that my lungs were sound, and the attack was
due to the bursting of a blood-vessel.  I was to avoid sitting upright in
bed, to receive no visitors, and have ice applied.  I believed myself
destined to an early death, but the departure from life caused me no
fear; nay, I felt so weary that I desired nothing but eternal sleep.
Only I wanted to see my mother again.

Then let my end come!

I was in the mood to write, and either the day after the haemorrhage or
the next one I composed the following verses:

A field of poppies swaying to and fro,
Their blossoms scarlet as fresh blood,
I see, While o'er me, radiant in the noontide glow,
The sky, blue as corn-flowers, arches free.

Low music echoes through the breezes warm;
The violet lends the poppy her sweet breath;
The song of nightingales is heard, a swarm
Of butterflies flit hov'ring o'er the heath.

While thus I lie, wrapped in a morning dream,
Half waking, half asleep, 'mid poppies red,
A fresh breeze cools my burning cheeks; a gleam
Of light shines in the East.  Hath the night sped?

Then upward from an opening bud hath flown
A poppy leaf toward the azure sky,
But close beside it, from a flower full-blown,
The scattered petals on the brown earth lie.

The leaflet flutters, a fair sight to view,
By the fresh matin breezes heavenward borne,
The faded poppy falls, the fields anew
To fertilize, which grateful thanks return.

Starting from slumber round my room I gaze
My hand of my own life-blood bears the stain;
I am the poppy-leaf, with the first rays
Of morning snatched away from earth's domain.

Not mine the fate the world's dark ways to wend,
And perish, wearied, at the goal of life;
Still glad and blooming, I leave every friend;
The game is lost--but with what joys 'twas rife!

I cannot express how these verses relieved my heart; and when on the
third day I again felt comparatively well I tried to believe that I
should soon recover, enjoy the pleasures of corps life, though with some
caution, and devote myself seriously to the study of jurisprudence under
Pernice's direction.

The physician gave his permission for a speedy return, but his assurance
that there was no immediate danger if I was careful did not afford me
unmixed pleasure.  For my mother's sake and my own I desired to live,
but the rules he prescribed before my departure were so contradictory to
my nature that they seemed unbearably cruel.  They restricted every
movement.  He feared the haemorrhage far less than the tender feeling in
the soles of my feet and other small symptoms of the commencement of a
chronic disease.

Middendorf had taught us to recognize God's guidance in Nature and our
own lives, and how often I succeeded in doing so!  But when I examined
myself and my condition closely it seemed as if what had befallen me was
the result of a malicious or blind chance.

Never before or since have I felt so crushed and destitute of support as
during those days, and in this mood I left the city where the spring days
of life had bloomed so richly for me, and returned home to my mother.
She had learned what had occurred, but the physician had assured her that
with my vigorous constitution I should regain my health if I followed his
directions.




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE HARDEST TIME IN THE SCHOOL OF LIFE.

The period which now followed was the most terrible of my whole life.
Even the faithful love that surrounded me could do little to relieve it.

Medicines did not avail, and I had not yet found the arcanum which
afterwards so greatly benefitted my suffering soul.

The props which my mother and Middendorf had bestowed upon me when a boy
had fallen; and the feeling of convalescence, which gives the invalid's
life a sense of bliss the healthy person rarely knows, could not aid me,
for the disease increased with wonderful speed.

When autumn came I was so much worse that Geheimrath von Ammon, a learned
and experienced physician, recalled his advice that my mother and I
should spend the winter in the south.  The journey would have been fatal.
The correctness of his judgment was proved by the short trip to Berlin
which I took with my mother, aided by my brother Martin, who was then a
physician studying with the famous clinical doctor Schonlein.  It was
attended with cruel suffering and the most injurious results, but it was
necessary for me to return to my comfortable winter quarters.  Our old
friend and family physician, who had come to Hosterwitz in September to
visit me, wished to have me near him, and in those days there was
probably no one who deserved more confidence; for Heinrich Moritz Romberg
was considered the most distinguished pathologist in nervous diseases in
Germany, and his works on his own specialty are still valued.

In what a condition I entered the home which I had left so strong and
full of youthful vigour!  And Berlin did not receive me kindly; for the
first months I spent there brought days of suffering with fever in the
afternoon, and nights whose condition was no less torturing than pain.

But our physician had been present at my birth, he was my godfather, and
as kind as if I were his son.  He did everything in his power to relieve
me, but the remedies he used were not much easier to bear than many a
torturing disease.  And hardest of all, I was ordered to keep perfectly
still in bed.  What a prospect!  But when I had once resolved to follow
the doctor's advice, I controlled with the utmost care every movement of
my body.  I, who had so often wished to fly, lay like my own corpse.  I
did not move, for I did not want to die, and intended to use every means
in my power to defer the end.  Death, which after the haemorrhage had
appeared as the beautiful winged boy who is so easily mistaken for the
god of love--Death, who had incited me to write saucy, defiant verses
about him, now confronted me as a hollow-eyed, hideous skeleton.

In the guise of the most appalling figure among the apocalyptic riders
of Cornelius, who had used me when a child for the model of a laughing
angel, he seemed to be stretching his hand toward me from his emaciated
steed.  The poppy leaf was not to flutter toward the sky, but to wither
in the dust.

Once, several weeks after our return home, I saw the eyes of my mother,
who rarely wept, reddened with tears after a conversation with Dr.
Romberg.  When I asked my friend and physician if he would advise me to
make my will, he said that it could do no harm.

Soon after Hans Geppert, who meanwhile had become a notary, arrived with
two witnesses, odd-looking fellows who belonged to the working class, and
I made my will in due form.  The certainty that when I was no more what I
possessed would be divided as I wished was a ray of light in this gloomy
time.

No one knows the solemnity of Death save the person whom his cold hand
has touched, and I felt it for weeks upon my heart.

What days and nights these were!

Yet in the presence of the open grave from which I shrank something took
place which deeply moved my whole nature, gave it a new direction, led me
to self-examination, and thence to a knowledge of my own character which
revealed many surprising and unpleasing things.  But I also felt that
it was not yet too late to bring the good and evil traits, partly
hereditary, partly acquired, into harmony with one another and render
them of use to the same higher objects.

Yes, if I were permitted time to do so!

I had learned how quickly and unexpectedly the hour strikes which puts an
end to all struggle towards a goal.

Besides, I now knew what would protect me from a relapse into the old
careless waste of strength, what could aid me to do my utmost, for the
mother's heart had again found the son's, fully and completely.

I had been forced to become as helpless as a child in order again to lay
my head upon her breast and belong to her as completely as during the
first years of life.  During the long nights when fever robbed me of
sleep she sat beside my bed, holding my hands in hers.

At last one came which contained hours of the most intense suffering, and
in its course she asked, "Can you still pray?"  The answer, which came
from my inmost heart, was, "When you are with me, and with you,
certainly."

We remained silent a long time, and whenever impatience, suffering, and
faintness threatened to overpower me, I found, like Antaeus when he
touched the earth that had given him birth, new strength in my mother's
heart.

My old life seemed henceforward to lie far behind me.

I did not take up Feuerbach's writings again; his way could never again
have been mine.  In my suffering it had become evident from what an Eden
he turns away and into what a wilderness he leads.  But I still value
this thinker as an honest, virile, and brilliantly gifted seeker after
truth.

I also laid aside the other philosophers whose works I had been studying.

I never resumed Lotze, though later, with two other students, I attended
Trendelenburg's difficult course, and tried to comprehend Kant's
"critiques."

I first became familiar with Schopenhauer in Jena.

On the other hand, I again devoted many leisure hours to Egyptological
works.

I felt that these studies suited my powers and would satisfy me.
Everything which had formerly withheld me from the pursuits of learning
now seemed worthless.  It was as if I stood in a new relation to all
things.  Even the one to my mother had undergone a transformation.  I
realized for the first time what I possessed in her, how wrong I had
been, and what I owed to her.  One day during this period I remembered my
Poem of the World, and instantly had the box brought in which I kept it
among German favours, little pink notes, and similar trophies.

For the first time I perceived, in examining the fruits of the labour of
so many days and nights, the vast disproportion between the magnitude of
the subject and my untrained powers.  One passage seemed faulty, another
so overstrained and inadequate, that I flung it angrily back among the
rest.  At the same time I thought that the verses I had addressed to
various beauties and the answers which I had received ought not to be
seen by other eyes.  I was alone with the servant, a bright fire was
blazing in the stove, and, obedient to a hasty impulse, I told him to
throw the whole contents of the box into the fire.

When the last fragment was consumed to ashes I uttered a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, the flames also destroyed the greater part of my youthful
poems.  Even the completed acts of my tragedy had been overtaken by
destruction, like the heroes of Panthea and Abradatus.

If I had formerly obeyed the physician's order to lie motionless, I
followed it after the first signs of convalescence so rigidly that even
the experienced Dr. Romberg admitted that he had not given me credit for
so much self-control.  Toward the end of the winter my former
cheerfulness returned, and with it I also learned to use the arcanum
I have formerly mentioned, which makes even the most bitter things
enjoyable and lends them a taste of sweetness.  I might term it "the
practice of gratitude."  Without intending it, I acquired the art of
thankfulness by training my eyes to perceive the smallest trifle which
gave cause for it.  And this recognition of even the least favour of
Fortune filled the rude wintry days with so much sunshine, that when
children of my own were given me my first effort was to train them to
gratitude, and especially to an appreciation of trifles.

The motto 'Carpe diem,' which I had found in my father's Horace and had
engraved upon my seal ring, unexpectedly gained a new significance by no
longer translating it "enjoy," but "use the day," till the time came when
the two meanings seemed identical.




CHAPTER XXIV.

THE APPRENTICESHIP.

Firmly as I had resolved to follow the counsel of Horace, and dear as
earnest labour was becoming, I still lacked method, a fixed goal towards
which to move with firm tread in the seclusion to which my sufferings
still condemned me.

I had relinquished the study of the law.  It seemed more than doubtful
whether my health would ever permit me to devote myself to a practical
profession or an academic career, and my interest in jurisprudence was
too slight to have it allure me to make it the subject of theoretical
studies.

Egyptology, on the contrary, not only attracted me but permitted me to
devote my whole strength to it so far as my health would allow.  True,
Champollion, the founder of this science, termed it "a beautiful
dowerless maiden," but I could venture to woo her, and felt grateful
that, in choosing my profession, I could follow my inclination without
being forced to consider pecuniary advantages.

The province of labour was found, but with each step forward the
conviction of my utter lack of preparation for the new science grew
clearer.

Just then the kind heart of Wilhelm Grimm's wife brought her to me with
some delicious fruit syrup made by her own hands.  When I told her what
I was doing and expressed a wish to have a guide in my science, she
promised to tell "the men" at home, and within a few days after his
sister-in-law's visit Jacob was sitting with me.

He inquired with friendly interest how my attention had been called to
Egyptology, what progress I had made, and what other sciences I was
studying.

After my reply he shook his venerable head with its long grey locks, and
said, smiling:

"You have been putting the cart before the horse.  But that's the way with
young specialists.  They want to become masters in the workshops of their
sciences as a shoemaker learns to fashion boots.  Other things are of
small importance to them; and yet the special discipline first gains
value in connection with the rest or the wider province of the allied
sciences.  Your deciphering of hieroglyphics can only make you a
dragoman, and you must become a scholar in the higher sense, a real and
thorough one.  The first step is to lay the linguistic foundation."

This was said with the engaging yet impressively earnest frankness
characteristic of him.  He himself had never investigated Egyptian
matters closely, and therefore did not seek to direct my course minutely,
but advised me, in general, never to forget that the special science was
nothing save a single chord, which could only produce its full melody
with those that belonged to the same lute.

Lepsius had a broader view than most of those engaged in so narrow a
field of study.  He would speak of me to him.

The next Thursday Lepsius called on me.  I know this because that day
was reserved for his subsequent visits.

After learning what progress I had made by my own industry, he told me
what to do next, and lastly promised to come again.

He had inquired about my previous education, and urged me to study
philology, archaeology, and at least one Semitic language.  Later he
voluntarily informed me how much he, who had pursued philological,
archaeological, Sanscrit, and Germanistic studies, had been impeded in
his youth by having neglected the Semitic languages, which are more
nearly allied to the Egyptian.  It would be necessary also for me to
understand English and Italian, since many things which the Egyptologist
ought to know were published in these languages, as well as in French.
Lastly he advised me to obtain some insight into Sanscrit, which was the
point of departure for all linguistic studies.

His requirements raised mountain after mountain in my path, but the
thought of being compelled to scale these heights not only did not repel
me, but seemed extremely attractive.  I felt as if my strength increased
with the magnitude and multiplicity of the tasks imposed, and, full of
joyous excitement, I told Lepsius that I was ready to fulfil his
requirements in every detail.

We now discussed in what sequence and manner I should go to work, and to
this day I admire the composure, penetration, and lucidity with which he
sketched a plan of study that covered years.

I have reason to be grateful to this great scholar for the introduction
to my special science, but still more for the wisdom with which he
pointed out the direction of my studies.  Like Jacob Grimm, he compelled
me, as an Egyptologist, to remain in connection with the kindred
departments.

Later my own experience was to teach me the correctness of his assertion
that it would be a mistake to commence by studying so restricted a
science as Egyptology.

My pupils can bear witness that during my long period of teaching I
always strove to urge students who intended to devote themselves to
Egyptology first to strengthen the foundations, without which the special
structure lacks support.

Lepsius's plan of instruction provided that I should follow these
principles from the beginning.  The task I had to perform was a great and
difficult one.  How infinitely easier it was for those whom I had the
privilege of introducing to this science!  The lecture-rooms of famous
teachers stood open to them, while my physical condition kept me for
weeks from the university; and how scanty were the aids to which the