As witness to his
connubial difficulties, he showed a large scar across his throat. He was
well-read and, amongst other things, enthusiastically admired
Scandinavian literature because it had produced the world's greatest
poet, Ossian, with whom he had become acquainted in Cesarotti's Italian
translation. It was useless to attempt to explain to him the difference
between Scandinavia and Scotland. They are both in the North, he would
reply.
XII.
A young American named Olcott, who visited Chasles and occasionally
looked me up, brought with him a breath from the universities of the
great North American Republic. A young German, Dr. Goldschmidt, a
distinguished Sanscrit scholar, a man of more means than I, who had a
pretty flat with a view over the Place du Chatelet, and dined at good
restaurants, came, as it were, athwart the many impressions I had
received of Romance nature and Romance intellectual life, with his
violent German national feeling and his thorough knowledge. As early as
the Spring, he believed there would be war between Germany and France
and wished in that event to be a soldier, as all other German students,
so he declared, passionately wished. He was a powerfully built,
energetic, well-informed man of the world, with something of the rich
man's habit of command.
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