'Have you studied
chemistry?' he asked. 'With Lavoisier,' I answered. 'You are happy in
being rich and free,' he cried; then from the depths of his bosom came
the sigh of a man,--one of those sighs which reveal a hell of anguish
hidden in the brain or in the heart, a something ardent, concentrated,
not to be expressed in words. He ended his sentence with a look that
startled me. After a pause, he told me that Poland being at her last
gasp he had taken refuge in Sweden. There he had sought consolation
for his country's fate in the study of chemistry, for which he had
always felt an irresistible vocation. 'And I see you recognize as I
do,' he added, 'that gum arabic, sugar, and starch, reduced to powder,
each yield a substance absolutely similar, with, when analyzed, the
same qualitative result.'
"He paused again; and then, after examining me with a searching eye,
he said confidentially, in a low voice, certain grave words whose
general meaning alone remains fixed on my memory; but he spoke with a
force of tone, with fervid inflections, with an energy of gesture,
which stirred my very vitals, and struck my imagination as the hammer
strikes the anvil. I will tell you briefly the arguments he used,
which were to me like the live coal laid by the Almighty upon Isaiah's
tongue; for my studies with Lavoisier enabled me to understand their
full bearing.
"'Monsieur,' he said, 'the parity of these three substances, in
appearance so distinct, led me to think that all the productions of
nature ought to have a single principle.
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