118 ANDREAS KURTZ 



honoured with an interview, whilst they were 

 paying him their compliments, he would rush 

 away and leave them alone, not to return. 

 He was morbidly averse to all society, and 

 especially shunned the presence or attendance 

 of any female domestic, if he even caught 

 sight of one it involved her dismissal ; he 

 used to give his orders for his dinner by 

 depositing on a table a paper with written 

 instructions. Again he was so methodical 

 that whenever he took a book down from his 

 library shelf, even for his own use, he would 

 enter it in a book kept for the purpose ; when 

 his librarian died he appointed no successor, 

 but took the work himself. He used to lend 

 his books to distinguished students and men 

 of science with whom he was acquainted, but 

 books were lent on only one day a week, 

 during certain honrs, when he himself attended 

 to deliver and to receive. Kurtz's partner's 

 eccentricity was much more grotesque ; he 

 fancied his nose was a china teapot and ever 

 in danger of being smashed. 



The genius and inventions of Henry Caven- 

 dish had been much more highly appreciated 

 by the great chemists and philosophers of the 

 French school, than by his own countrymen, 

 so that Kurtz, who was so essentially a 



