Excellenz von Helmholtz had left Berlin for his summer vacation; among my German fellow students at the Physical Institute there was not much interest in Faraday and Maxwell. I do not know how difficult it is to conceal a deep secret, because I never had one to conceal; but I do know how hard it is to keep imprisoned in one’s heart the joy which one feels when the light of new knowledge rises above one’s mental horizon. I had planned to visit my mother during that summer; I had not seen her for nearly two years. Perhaps, I thought, I might find somebody in my native Banat to whom I could disclose the joy which I received from the revelation which came to me through Helmholtz. Kos, my teacher of fifteen years before in Panchevo, was no longer among the living; in fact, that school was no longer in existence, the Hungarian régime having replaced it by a Hungarian school. I would have liked nothing better than to tell him how Maxwell answered the question: “What is Light?” * * * * * In the beginning of August of that summer I was in Idvor again, carrying with me the two volumes of Helmholtz’s addresses. My mother received me with a heart which she described as overflowing with blessings which my visit and the visit of God’s grace upon Idvor was pouring into it. The golden harvest was all in, and it was the richest that Idvor had seen for many a year; the grapes in the old vineyards were beginning to ripen, and the peach-trees among the rows of vines in the vineyards were heavily loaded with the juicy fruit of ambrosial flavor; the melons in the endless melon patches looked big and flourishing, and suggested that at any moment they might burst with the fulness of their exuberant prosperity. The dark-green corn-fields seemed to groan under the heavy load of the young ears of corn, and the pasturelands alongside of the corn-fields were alive with flocks of sheep, carrying udders which reminded one of the abundance of milk, cream, and cheese such as Idvor had seldom seen. All these things my mother pointed out to me, and she assured me that by the grace of God she was enabled to be a bountiful hostess to me, because she had everything in great abundance which she knew I always liked. Melons, cooled at the bottom of a deep well; grapes and peaches picked before sunrise and covered up with vine-leaves to keep them cool and fresh; young corn picked late in the afternoon and roasted in the evening in front of a wood fire; cream from sheep’s milk supplied by the blessed sheep the day before. All these were sweet and delicious things; but have you ever tasted them when their sweetness is flavored by the love of an indulgent mother? If you have not, then you do not know what sweetness is. I warned my mother that her hospitality might transform me, as three years before, into a pampered pet who would be too slow to return to Berlin. Reminding me of the story which she had told me