It was an ambitious atmosphere, and the friendships which were formed were based on a love of intellectual pleasures. There was also the vivid vital student life beyond the classrooms; there were long excursions on foot in vacation times; there were duels and love-affairs, and there were boisterous evenings thick with tobacco smoke. Agassiz was a powerful gymnast and an expert fencer. There was nothing in the student life that was good in which he did not participate. Of the many friendships which his open and affectionate nature so easily formed, his friendship with Alexander Braun was deepest and most lasting. Soon he began to visit Braun at his home in Carlsruhe, where he met his friend’s two talented sisters, one of whom was later to become his wife. And it was here, in the spring of 1827, that the friendly Braun family nursed him back to health after a serious attack of typhoid fever. The earnestness of these young men is perhaps best described by Agassiz himself. “When our lectures are over, we meet in the evening at Braun’s room or mine, with three or four intimate acquaintances, and talk of scientific matters, each one in his turn presenting a subject which is first developed by him and then discussed by all. These exercises are very instructive. As my share, I have begun to give a course of natural history, or rather of pure zoölogy. Braun talks to us of botany; and another of our company, Mahir, teaches us mathematics and physics in his turn; Schimper will be our professor of philosophy. Thus we shall form a little university, instructing one another, and at the same time learning what we teach more thoroughly, because we shall be obliged to demonstrate it.” From Heidelberg the three companions now transferred their studies to the new University of Munich, where a far more stimulating intellectual life awaited them. Here were some of the most celebrated teachers of the day, and “the city teemed with resources for the student in arts, letters, philosophy, and science.” A fine spirit existed between students and professors, and there was constant opportunity, not only in the classrooms, but beyond their walls, for the earnest young men to draw on the wells of information which their brilliant instructors freely afforded them.