d me to spend some
time with him in Paris. He had his own apartments there, and promised
to look after me. At the same time my cousin, Baroness Stolzenberg,
whom I have mentioned before as wishing me to enter the Austrian
diplomatic service, offered to send me to England at her expense as a
teacher. I hesitated for some days between these two offers. I knew
that my own patrimony had been nearly spent at Leipzig and Berlin, and
the time had come for me to begin to support myself; and how was I to
do that in Paris? On the other hand, I had long felt that for
continuing my Sanskrit studies a stay in Paris, and later perhaps in
London also, was indispensable. I had also to consider the feelings of
my mother, whose whole heart was absorbed in her only son. However,
Sanskrit, and my love of an independent life won the day, and I
decided to accept Hagedorn's proposal. My mind once made up, I wanted
to be off at once, but Hagedorn could not fix the exact time when he
would be free to leave, and told me to keep myself in readiness to
start whenever he found himself free to go. I accordingly went to stay
with my mother and my married sister at Chemnitz, and indulged in
idleness and the unwonted dissipations of parties, dances, and long
skating expeditions. At last, feeling I could not afford to wait any
longer, I went off to Dessau to see Hagedorn, and found to my great
disappointment that he was detained by important legal business in
connection with his property near Munich, and could not yet fix a date
for his departure. So it was settled that I was to go on to Paris
without him, and instal myself in his apartment, 25, Rue Royale St.
Honore.

I got my passport wherein I was carefully described with all my
particular marks, and started off on my foreign travels. At first all
went well. I stopped a few days at Bonn, and again at Brussels, where
I had my first experience of hearing a foreign language spoken round
me, and found that my French was sadly deficient. But from Brussels
on, my experiences were anything but agreeable. The journey to Paris
took twenty-four hours, and we travelled day and night without any
stop for meals. Most of the passengers were well provided with food
and wine, but had it not been for the kindness of some old ladies, my
fellow-travellers, I should really have starved. When we crossed the
frontier the luggage of all passengers was carefully examined. But the
_douanier_, in trying to open my portmantea