FROM DR.RUDOLF STAUB,IN PARIS,TO DR.JULIUS HIRSCH,AT GOTTINGEN.
My dear brother in Science--I resume my hasty notes,of which I sent you the first instalment some weeks ago.I mentioned then that I intended to leave my hotel,not finding it sufficiently local and national.It was kept by a Pomeranian,and the waiters,without exception,were from the Fatherland.I fancied myself at Berlin,Unter den Linden,and I reflected that,having taken the serious step of visiting the head-quarters of the Gallic genius,I should try and project myself;as much as possible,into the circumstances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its irrepressible activity.It seemed to me that there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of placing myself in relations,as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of causes,with the spontaneous home-life of the country.
I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French extraction and education,who supplements the shortcomings of an income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-gratification,by providing food and lodging for a limited number of distinguished strangers.I should have preferred to have my room alone in the house,and to take my meals in a brewery,of very good appearance,which I speedily discovered in the same street;but this arrangement,though very lucidly proposed by myself;was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment (a woman with a mathematical head),and I have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the opportunity that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions,and of observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment,the moment when the satisfaction of the TASTE,which is the governing quality in its composition,produces a kind of exhalation,an intellectual transpiration,which,though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator,is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument.
I have adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily (I mean the one I carry in my good square German head),and I am not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid,as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation.A prepared surface is what I need,and I have prepared my surface.
Unfortunately here,also,I find the individual native in the minority.There are only four French persons in the house--the individuals concerned in its management,three of whom are women,and one a man.This preponderance of the feminine element is,however,in itself characteristic,as I need not remind you what an abnormally--developed part this sex has played in French history.
The remaining figure is apparently that of a man,but I hesitate to classify him so superficially.He appears to me less human than simian,and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ,to which the gambols of a hairy homunculus form an accompaniment.