At fourteen, Louis left Bienne, having finished his education, as he supposed, prior to entering the business house of his uncle, François Mayor, at Neuchâtel. That his young mind turned longingly towards a different future, may be seen from his desires written at this time on a sheet of foolscap. "I wish to advance in the sciences, and for that I need D'Anville, Ritter, an Italian dictionary, a Strabo in Greek, Mannert and Thiersch; and also the works of Malte-Brun and Seyfert. I have resolved, as far as I am allowed to do so, to become a man of letters, and at present I can go no further: first, in ancient geography, for I already know all my note-books, and I have only such books as Mr. Rickly can lend me; I must have D'Anville or Mannert; second, in modern geography also, I have only such books as Mr. Rickly can lend me, and the Osterwold geography, which does not accord with the new divisions; I must have Ritter or Malte-Brun; third, for Greek I need a new grammar, and I shall choose Thiersch; fourth, I have no Italian dictionary, except one lent me by Mr. Moltz; I must have one; fifth, for Latin I need a larger grammar than the one I have, and I should like Seyfert; sixth, Mr. Rickly tells me that, as I have a taste for geography, he will give me a lesson in Greek (_gratis_) in which we would translate Strabo, provided I can find one. For all this I ought to have about twelve louis. I should like to stay at Bienne till the month of July, and afterward serve my apprenticeship in commerce at Neuchâtel for a year and a half. Then I should like to pass four years at a university in Germany, and finally finish my studies at Paris, where I would stay about five years. Then, at the age of twenty-five, I could begin to write." At this early age, then, he was thinking of being an author! He begged his parents to defer the business project for two years, that he might study at the College of Lausanne. They were willing and glad to please their boy; but they knew from experience the ills of poverty, and they hoped to save him from it by a wise choice of a life-work. They gratified him, however, and he went to Lausanne. His uncle, Dr. Mathias Mayor, a physician of Lausanne, seeing that the boy was deeply interested in anatomy, advised that he should study medicine; so this was decided upon, as being more in accord with Louis' tastes than business. As poor Vincenzio Galileo found it a difficult matter to make a wool merchant or a doctor out of a boy destined to be a man of science, so did the father of Louis Agassiz.