WORK IN PARIS. 175 



TO HIS MOTHER. 



Paris, March 25, 1832. 

 ... It is true, dear mother, that I am 

 greatly straitened ; that I have much less 

 money to spend than I could wish, or even 

 than I need; on the other hand, this makes 

 me work the harder, and keeps me away from 

 distractions which might otherwise tempt me. 

 . . . With reference to my work, however, 

 things are not quite as you suppose, as re- 

 gards either my stay here or my relations with 

 M. Cuvier. Certainly, I hope that I should 

 lose neither his good-will nor his protection on 

 leaving here ; on the contrary, I am sure that 

 he would be the first to advise me to accept 

 any professorship, or any place which might be 

 advantageous for me, however removed from 

 my present occupations, and that his counsels 

 would follow me there. But what cannot fol- 

 low me, and what I owe quite as much to 

 him, is the privilege of examining all the col- 

 lections. These I can have nowhere but in 

 Paris, since even if he would consent to it I 

 could not carry away with me a hundred 

 quintals of fossil fish, which, for the sake of 

 comparison, I must have before my eyes, nor 

 thousands of fish-skeletons, which would alone 



