Chapter 1 - Page 2

The fact is, that during the course of his lectures atthe Johannæum, the Professor often came to a complete standstill; hefought with wilful words that refused to pass his struggling lips,such words as resist and distend the cheeks, and at last break outinto the unasked-for shape of a round and most unscientific oath:then his fury would gradually abate.

Now in mineralogy there are many half-Greek and half-Latin terms,very hard to articulate, and which would be most trying to a poet'smeasures. I don't wish to say a word against so respectable ascience, far be that from me. True, in the august presence ofrhombohedral crystals, retinasphaltic resins, gehlenites, Fassaites,molybdenites, tungstates of manganese, and titanite of zirconium,why, the most facile of tongues may make a slip now and then.

It therefore happened that this venial fault of my uncle's came to bepretty well understood in time, and an unfair advantage was taken ofit; the students laid wait for him in dangerous places, and when hebegan to stumble, loud was the laughter, which is not in good taste,not even in Germans. And if there was always a full audience tohonour the Liedenbrock courses, I should be sorry to conjecture howmany came to make merry at my uncle's expense.

Nevertheless my good uncle was a man of deep learning - a fact I ammost anxious to assert and reassert. Sometimes he might irretrievablyinjure a specimen by his too great ardour in handling it; but stillhe united the genius of a true geologist with the keen eye of themineralogist. Armed with his hammer, his steel pointer, his magneticneedles, his blowpipe, and his bottle of nitric acid, he was apowerful man of science. He would refer any mineral to its properplace among the six hundred [l] elementary substances now enumerated,by its fracture, its appearance, its hardness, its fusibility, itssonorousness, its smell, and its taste.

The name of Liedenbrock was honourably mentioned in colleges andlearned societies. Humphry Davy, [2] Humboldt, Captain Sir JohnFranklin, General Sabine, never failed to call upon him on their waythrough Hamburg. Becquerel, Ebelman, Brewster, Dumas, Milne-Edwards,Saint-Claire-Deville frequently consulted him upon the most difficultproblems in chemistry, a science which was indebted to him forconsiderable discoveries, for in 1853 there had appeared at Leipzigan imposing folio by Otto Liedenbrock, entitled, "A Treatise uponTranscendental Chemistry," with plates; a work, however, which failedto cover its expenses.

To all these titles to honour let me add that my uncle was thecurator of the museum of mineralogy formed by M. Struve, the Russianambassador; a most valuable collection, the fame of which is European.

Such was the gentleman who addressed me in that impetuous manner.Fancy a tall, spare man, of an iron constitution, and with a faircomplexion which took off a good ten years from the fifty he must ownto. His restless