e daughter, the Duchesse de Wagram, made much of me, as she was
very fond of music. There were some German families also, some rich,
some poor, who showed me great kindness.

I was too much oppressed with cares and anxieties about my life and my
literary plans to think much of society and enjoyment. Even of the
students and student life I saw but little, though I was actually
attending lectures with them. I must say, however, that the little I
did see of student life in Paris gave me a very different idea from
what is generally thought of their vagaries and extravagances. A
Frenchman, if he once begins to work, can work and does work very
hard. I remember seeing several instances of this, but it is possible
that I may have seen the pick of the Quartier Latin only. One who was
then a young man, preparing for the Church, but already with an eye to
higher flights, was Renan. At first he still looked upon all young
Germans with suspicion, but this feeling soon disappeared. I remember
him chiefly at the Bibliotheque Royale, where he had a very small
place in the Oriental Department. Hase, the Greek scholar, Reinaud,
the Arabist, and Stanislas Julien, the Sinologue, were librarians
then. Hase, a German by birth, was most obliging, but he was greatly
afraid of speaking German, and insisted on our always speaking French
to him. Often did he call Renan to fetch MSS. for me: "Renan," he
would call out very loudly, "allez chercher, pour Monsieur Max Mueller,
le manuscrit sanscrit, numero ...," and then followed a pause, till he
had translated "1637" into French. In later years Renan and I became
great friends, but we German scholars were often puzzled at his great
popularity, which certainly was owing to his style more even than to
his scholarship. Some time later, when I was already established in
England, we had a little controversy, and I printed a rather fierce
attack on his _Grammaire Semitique_. But we were intimate enough for
me to show him my pamphlet, and when he wrote to me, "Pardonnez-moi,
je n'ai pas compris ce que vous vouliez dire," I suppressed the
pamphlet, though it was printed, and we remained friends for life. He
translated my first article on Comparative Mythology, and I had a
number of most interesting letters from him. It was his wife who did
the translation, while he revised it. That French pamphlet is very
scarce now; my own pamphlet was entirely suppressed; even I myself can
find no copy of it among the ru