PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 193 



Fortunately the head of the house took a kindly view of 

 this bold request and after thoroughly investigating the young 

 man as to his intellectual resources (he had no other) his am- 

 bitions and his character, consented that he might return and 

 claim his bride when he was established with a sufficient income 

 to support her. It was not long before he received appoint- 

 ments which promised an annual income of five hundred dollars 

 and at the age of twfenty-five he was united in marriage with the 

 daughter of General \"on Wolflfskel. of Saxe Weimer. 



The young lady who then joined her fortunes with the son 

 of a maker of watch springs had stood, only a little while be- 

 fore as bridesmaid to Augusta, daughter of the Grand Duke of 

 Saxe Weimer, when Prince William of Prussia came for his 

 future consort, the two who forty years later became the first 

 Emperor and Empress of United Germany. When her own 

 marriage took place, Mr. Lesquereux's "best man" w^as a young 

 lieutenant of the army named Von Moltke. whose name will al- 

 ways be linked with that of Bismarck and the first Kaiser. Two 

 years of contented happiness followed this union when mis- 

 fortune came in the shape of a loss of hearing due originally to 

 a fall at the age of ten years, over the edge of a mountain cliff, 

 from which he 'narrowly escaped death. Treatment by eminent 

 physicians in Paris served only to accelerate the trouble and in 

 a few months Lesquereux was absolutely and irrevocably deaf. 

 His career as a professor, to which they had both looked forward 

 with so much delight, was thus suddenly ended and to support 

 himself and his wife he was obliged to turn to manual labor. 

 Buying a lathe he began life anew as an engraver of watch cases 

 and alj first, though working from early in the morning until 

 late at night, his earnings were barely one dollar a day. His 

 wife, who had been bridesmaid to an empress, was as brave 

 as he and on this slender income they lived, always cheerful and 

 happy. Even this occupation had to be given up on account of 

 failure in health due to close confinement, and then his father 

 came to his aid by making him his partner in the small watch 

 spring factory. 



During the years thus spent in simple mechanical toil Les- 



