36 ELIZABETH CARY AGASSIZ 
she had told of her preparations for turning the extraor- 
dinary establishment into a home and making it “cheerful 
and comfortable.” Her plans had been complicated during 
this same absence of Agassiz by “Papa Christinat,”” who 
believing that it would be best to leave the newly married 
couple to manage the household, had suddenly taken his 
departure to a French parish in New Orleans. His decision 
was a matter of deep regret to the bride elect, for such was 
his familiarity with all the details of Agassiz’s daily life that 
his presence would have lifted many responsibilities from 
her shoulders after she became the mistress of-the house in 
Oxford Street. “I have assured him,” she writes character- 
istically to Agassiz after having had a long talk with Mr. 
Christinat, “‘that he will never find me tenacious of my 
rights, that I should be not only willing but glad to give 
up to him the occupations that he has had at your house; 
but all I urge in argument or affectionate persuasion is 
useless.” “You must not be quite in despair at the thought 
of my ignorance and inexperience in household matters,” 
she says in another letter, “for I hope to convince you that 
I can be quite an efficient person on occasion; but I know 
that the loss of Mr. Christinat as a useful assistant in your 
household will be but a small part of your regret and in 
other things I cannot so easily fill his place.” Her difficulties 
were simplified, however, by the scattering of several of the 
foreign members of the establishment and many assistants. 
Mr. Jacques Burkhardt, an artist friend of Agassiz, his fel- 
low-student at Munich and now his draughtsman, alone re- 
mained, and continued to live in the family until his death 
seventeen years later at the house of Agassiz’s younger 
daughter, Mrs. Shaw. In the summer preceding Agassiz’s 
