With every year my own work became more and more prosaic, and yet more and more absorbing. Neither at Berlin nor afterwards at Paris, had I time or inclination to make new friends or cultivate literary society. Berlin never was rich in poets or poetry; Paris also, when I was there in 1844, and again in 1847 and 1848, had no names to attract me. Lamartine had some fascination for me, and I managed to see him and hear much about him from a common friend, Baron von Eckstein. This German Baron was a well-known character in Paris between 1840 and 1850, a German settled there for many years, a Roman Catholic, much mixed up, I believe, in small political transactions, and a constant contributor to the _Augsburger Zeitung_, at that time the _Times_ of Germany. He was a man of wide interests, a student of Sanskrit, chiefly attracted by the mystic philosophy of the Upanishads and the Vedânta. When he heard of my having come to Paris to attend Burnouf’s lectures and to prepare the first edition of the “Rig Veda,” he toiled up to my rooms, though they were _au cinquième_ and he was an old man and a martyr to gout. He was full of enthusiasm, and full of kindness for a poor student. I was very poor then; I hardly know now how I managed to keep myself afloat, yet I never borrowed and never owed a penny to anybody. I disliked giving lessons, but I worked like a horse for others, copying and collating manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Royale. I lived like a Hindu Sannyâsin, but, as Heine said, Und ich hab’ es doch ertragen— Aber fragt mich nur nicht wie. Baron Eckstein’s eyes were too weak to allow him to copy and collate Sanskrit manuscripts, and I gladly did it for him. I recollect copying for him, among other texts, the whole of the Aitarêya Brâhmana in Latin letters. I still possess a copy of it. He paid me liberally, and he often invited me to lunch with him at his _café_, which was welcome to a young man of good appetite, who had to be satisfied with wretched dinners at the Palais Royal, but not at Véfour’s or the Trois Frères Provençaux. Being the Paris correspondent of the leading German paper, the Baron was on friendly terms with many of the political and literary celebrities of the time. I believe he was in receipt of a literary pension from the French Government, but I do not know it for certain. He offered to introduce me to George Sand, to Lamennais, to the Comtesse d’Agout (Daniel Stern), to Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and others. But I shut my eyes and shook my head; I had no time then for anything but the Veda, and getting ready for the great battle of life that was before me. I am sorry for it now, but, without self-denial, we can never do anything.