SYNTHETIC CHEMISTRY 



interrupted success. His remark recalls that of 

 Bismarck in his old age, that all the really happy 

 moments of his life would fill but a few minutes. 



Of the man as he appears: There is recollection 

 of a gray morning in March, two years ago, when I 

 took my way along the banks of the Seine, and up 

 the sole boulevard of which the Latin Quarter may 

 boast. In the subdued light the sombre pile of 

 Notre Dame, a little shrunken and out of place un- 

 der the usual brilliant skies of Paris, stirred, with 

 its elusive beauty, those poignant emotions which 

 a rare junction of mood and scene may sometimes 

 bring. Even the rather aggressive columns of the 

 new Sorbonne seemed softened, as I turned into a 

 narrow street, where at their side stands the old 

 College de France. 



Across the court and up a dim, uncertain pair of 

 stairs you fumble in the dark passage for an iron 

 door, open, and find yourself in a small, bare am- 

 phitheatre, bare and gray as a cloister. A stray 

 dozen students are there, one a girl. By-and-by 

 the door of an underground passage opens, a little 

 man with an enormous head enters, followed by his 

 prtparateur. He shuffles a few notes, scribbled on 

 the backs of envelopes or chance pieces of paper, 

 drops a lump of sugar into a tumbler of water, stirs 

 it carefully with a glass rod, drinks of it gingerly, 

 and in an abstracted, almost inaudible monotone 

 " 193 



