Читать книгу Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence - Louis Agassiz - Страница 80
TO HIS PARENTS.
ОглавлениеMUNICH, November 26, 1830.
. . .When you receive this I shall be no longer in Munich; by means of a last draft on M. Eichthal I have settled with every one, and I hope to leave the day after to-morrow. I fully recognize the justice of your observations, my dear father, but as you start from a mistaken point of view, they do not coincide altogether with existing circumstances. I intend to stay with you until the approach of summer, not only with the aim of working upon the text of my book, but chiefly in order to take advantage of all the fossil collections in Switzerland. For that purpose I positively need a draughtsman, who, thanks to my publisher, is not in my pay, and who must accompany me in future wherever I go. Since there is no room at home, please see how he can be lodged in the neighborhood. I have, at the utmost, to glance each day at what he has done. I can even give him work for several weeks in which my presence would be unnecessary. If there is a considerable collection of fossils at Zurich, I shall leave him there till he has finished his work, and then he will rejoin me; all that depends upon circumstances. In any case he must not be a charge to you, still less interfere with our family privacy. That I may spend all my time with you, I shall at present bring with me nothing that is not absolutely necessary. We shall see later where I shall place my museum. As to visits, they are not to be thought of until the spring. I could not bear the idea of interruption before the first number of my "Fishes" is finished.
The artist in question was Mr. Dinkel. His relations with the family became of a truly friendly character. The connection between him and Agassiz, most honorable to both parties, lasted for sixteen years, and was then only interrupted by the departure of Agassiz for America. During this whole period Mr. Dinkel was occupied as his draughtsman, living sometimes in Paris, sometimes in England, sometimes in Switzerland, wherever, in short, there were specimens to be drawn. In a private letter, written long afterward, he says, in speaking of the break in their intercourse caused by Agassiz's removal to America: "For a long time I felt unhappy at that separation. . .He was a kind, noble-hearted friend; he was very benevolent, and if he had possessed millions of money he would have spent them for his researches in science, and have done good to his fellow-creatures as much as possible."
Some passages from Braun's letters complete the chapter of these years in Munich, so rich in purpose and in experience, the prelude, as it were, to the intellectual life of the two friends who had entered upon them together. These extracts show how seriously, not without a certain sadness, they near the end.