led him to make the acquaintance of
the leaders of his science in Paris had not only been noticed by
Humboldt, but had filled him with anxiety. When Liebig went that very day
to his kind patron he was received at first with gay jests, afterwards
with the kindest sympathy.

The great naturalist had read his paper and perceived the writer's future
promise. He at once made him acquainted with Gay Lussac, the famous
Parisian chemist, and Liebig was thus placed on the road to the lofty
position which he was afterwards to occupy in all the departments of
science.

The Munich zoologist von Siebold we first knew intimately years after. I
shall have more to say of him later, and also of the historian Gervinus,
who, behind apparently repellant arrogance, concealed the noblest human
benevolence.

After the first treatment, which occupied six weeks, the physician
ordered an intermission of the baths. I was to leave Wildbad to
strengthen in the pure air of the Black Forest the health I had gained.
On the Enz we had been in the midst of society. The new residence was to
afford me an opportunity to lead a lonely, quiet life with my mother and
my books, which latter, however, were only to be used in moderation.

Shortly before our departure we had taken a longer drive with our new
friends Fran Puricelli and her daughter Jenny to the Hirsau cloister.

The daughter specially attracted me. She was pretty, well educated, and
possessed so much independence and keenness of mind that this alone would
have sufficed to render her remarkable.

Afterwards I often thought simultaneously of her and Nenny, yet they were
totally unlike in character, having nothing in common save their
steadfast faith and the power of looking with happy confidence beyond
this life into death.

The devout Protestant had created a religion of her own, in which
everything that she loved and which she found beautiful and sacred had a
place.

Jenny's imagination was no less vivid, but she used it merely to behold
in the form most congenial to her nature and sense of beauty what faith
commanded her to accept. For Jenny the Church had already devised and
arranged what Nenny's poetic soul created. The Protestant had succeeded
in blending Father and Son into one in order to pray to love itself. The
Catholic, besides the Holy Trinity, had made the Virgin Mother the
embodiment of the feeling dearest to her girlish heart and bestowed on
her the form of the person whom s