22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The elder Becquerel, who died about the same time, at an advanced 

 age, after life-long toils, was already a gray-haired man when I became 

 acquainted with him in the Societe Philomatique at Paris. His son, 

 who had a seat beside him in the Academy, was then a zealous member 

 of that society, whose meetings I attended regularly, because it was the 

 favorite debating-ground of the younger savants, who displayed more 

 zeal in their discussions than was witnessed in the Academy. The old 

 gentleman frequently accompanied his son, but I never became intimate 

 with him. 



Before Haussmann had revolutionized the appearance of Paris, and 

 prior to the Revolution of 1848, there existed a Rue Copeau, leading 

 from the Rue Mouffetard, the headquarters of the rag-pickers, to the 

 small entrance-gate of the Jardin des Plantes, and upon which the 

 grand portal of the Pitie Hospital abutted. Diagonally across the 

 street from this portal there was a house bearing the number 4, where 

 most of the foreign naturalists, who worked for some time at the Jardin 

 des Plantes, had rooms. A well-known anatomist, Strauss-Durkheim, 

 author of an excellent anatomy of the cockchafer, upon which he had 

 toiled for twenty years, presided at the table of the house, and knew 

 how to ingratiate himself with the proprietresses, two spinster ladies, 

 who were as gaunt and slender as Papa Strauss was broad and fat. The 

 rooms had special names, derived from the illustrious zoologists, anato- 

 mists, and botanists, who had inhabited them. For one hundred francs 

 a month I had the two rooms of Johannes Milller on the first floor, 

 overlooking the gardens, together with board. Besides the naturalist 

 boarders, many old friends from the neighboring streets took their 

 breakfast and dinner there. They were mostly quiet people, living on 

 the interest of a small capital, and who attended all lectures at the Jar- 

 din des Plantes, at the College de France, and even at the more distant 

 Sorbonne, solely because they there found warm rooms in the winter- 

 time. The conversation at the dinner-table was rarely very animated. 

 Papa Strauss, whose bald head emerged from behind a very large green 

 lamp-shade, like the full moon from behind a dark wreath of clouds, 

 grunted discontentedly whenever louder tones fell upon his ears. 



But, at times, all Papa Strauss's grunts were fruitless, and such 

 was especially the case when the young medical students of the Pitie 

 Hospital came to visit us, and conversed with the naturalists of the 

 house about the scientific questions of the day. Two of them were 

 remarkably tall. One, a very long, slender, lively, witty, and sarcastio 

 young man, was a nephew of Cloquet, the celebrated surgeon, and, to 

 distinguish him from his uncle, the students called him only "Le Grand 

 Serpent." He went afterward, as physician of the shah, to Persia, and 

 was, during a chase, assassinated by unknown murderers, whom the 

 shah himself had probably hired. The other, by far graver, with a 

 melancholy expression of countenance, w T as Claude Bernard. Magen- 

 die's experiments, Longet's investigations of the physiology of the ner- 



