Married | Page 3

to know of the mystery of life. He was still innocent, but he had
heard many things discussed by the boys at school which had shocked
and disgusted him. The mother explained to him all she could explain;
warned him of the greatest danger to a young man, and exacted a
promise from him never to visit a house of ill-fame, not even out of
curiosity, because, as she pointed out, in such a case no man could ever
trust himself. And she implored him to live a temperate life, and turn to
God in prayer whenever temptation assaulted him.
His father was entirely devoted to science, which was a sealed book to
his wife. When the mother was already on the point of death, he made a
discovery which he hoped would make his name immortal in the
scientific world. He discovered, on a rubbish heap, outside the gates of
Stockholm, a new kind of goose-foot with curved hairs on the usually
straight-haired calyx. He was in communication with the Berlin
Academy of Sciences, and the latter was even now considering the
advisability of including the new variety in the "Flora Germanica"; he
was daily expecting to hear whether or not the Academy had decided to
immortalise his name by calling the plant Chenopodium
Wennerstroemianium. At his wife's death-bed he was absentminded,
almost unkind, for he had just received an answer in the affirmative,
and he fretted because neither he nor his wife could enjoy the great
news. She thought only of heaven and her children. He could not help
realising that to talk to her now of a calyx with curved hairs would be
the height of absurdity; but, he justified himself, it was not so much a
question of a calyx with straight or curved hairs, as of a scientific
discovery; and, more than that, it was a question of his future and the

future of his children, for their father's distinction meant bread for
them.
When his wife died on the following evening, he cried bitterly; he had
not shed a tear for many years. He was tortured by remorse,
remembered even the tiniest wrong he had ever done her, for he had
been, on the whole, an exemplary husband; his indifference, his
absent-mindedness of the previous day, filled him with shame and
regret, and in a moment of blankness he realised all the pettishness and
selfishness of his science which, he had imagined, was benefiting
mankind. But these emotions were short-lived; if you open a door with
a spring behind it, it will close again immediately. On the following
morning, after he had drawn up an announcement of her death for the
papers, he wrote a letter of thanks to the Berlin Academy of Sciences.
After that he resumed his work.
When he came home to dinner, he longed for his wife, so that he might
tell her of his success, for she had always been his truest friend, the
only human being who had never been jealous or envious. Now he
missed this loyal companion on whose approval he could count as a
matter of course; never once had she contradicted him, for since he
never told her more than the practical result of his researches, there was
no room for argument. For a moment the thought occurred to him that
he might make friends with his son; but they knew each other too little;
their relationship was that of officer and private soldier. His superior
rank did not permit him to make advances; moreover, he regarded the
boy with suspicion, because the latter possessed a keener intellect and
had read a number of new books which were unknown to him;
occasionally it even happened that the father, the professor, plainly
revealed his ignorance to his son, the school-boy. In such cases the
father was either compelled to dismiss the argument, with a few
contemptuous remarks to "these new follies," or peremptorily order the
school-boy to attend to his lessons. Once or twice, in self-defence, the
son had produced one or other of his school-books; the professor had
lost his temper and wished the new school-books to hell.
And so it came about that the father devoted himself to his collections

of dried plants and the son went his own way.
They lived in a quiet street to the left of the Observatory, in a small,
one-storey house, built of bricks, and surrounded by a large garden; the
garden was once the property of the Horticultural Society, and had
come into the professor's possession by inheritance. But since he
studied descriptive botany, and took no interest in the much more
interesting subjects of the physiology and morphology of plants, a
science which was as good as unknown in his youth, he was practically
a stranger to