LUND UNIVERSITY 79 



He might be making merry with the servants while the 

 family had retired to rest. Come what would, the good 

 Stobaeus resolved that at all cost of unpleasantness to 

 himself the boy should be saved. He burst into his 

 room at eleven o'clock, and there sat Linnaeus intrenched 

 with the works of Caesalpinus, Bauphius, Tournefort, 

 and others. 1 These were his companions. Stobaeus 

 ordered him at o*nce to bed after making him confess 

 he had persuaded Koulas, the German student, to take 

 the books out for him ; but, delighted to find his favourite 

 reinstated in his good opinion, he gave him free access 

 to his library and made him one of the family, treating 

 him, in fact, like a son. 2 



Professor Hok was always kind to Carl, but his 

 having taken to the medical branch of study drew him 

 out of Hok's supervision, he being a teacher of Divinity. 



Carl had his livelier pleasures too the students' 

 carnival of Valborg's mass eve, 3 the Walpurgisnacht, 

 when they light the Valborg fires. They collect mate- 

 rials for a bonfire on the highest and nearest hill, and the 

 young people go up and fire the beacon and dance 

 round the blaze in a ring, and tell fortunes by the flight 

 of the storks. There were likewise the Midsummer fes- 

 tivities, with fireworks and dancing. Carl also was of 

 great assistance to his protector in his profession. 

 Stobaeus being perpetually harassed with applications 

 for medical advice from the nobility of Skne, Linnaeus 

 was sometimes called to write letters and give advice in 



1 Stoever. 2 Diary. 8 Valborg's Day is May 1. 



