I had been at Berlin some nine months when, in December, 1844, my old friend Baron Hagedorn came to see me, and invited me to spend some time with him in Paris. He had his own apartments there, and promised to look after me. At the same time my cousin, Baroness Stolzenberg, whom I have mentioned before as wishing me to enter the Austrian diplomatic service, offered to send me to England at her expense as a teacher. I hesitated for some days between these two offers. I knew that my own patrimony had been nearly spent at Leipzig and Berlin, and the time had come for me to begin to support myself; and how was I to do that in Paris? On the other hand, I had long felt that for continuing my Sanskrit studies a stay in Paris, and later perhaps in London also, was indispensable. I had also to consider the feelings of my mother, whose whole heart was absorbed in her only son. However, Sanskrit, and my love of an independent life won the day, and I decided to accept Hagedorn’s proposal. My mind once made up, I wanted to be off at once, but Hagedorn could not fix the exact time when he would be free to leave, and told me to keep myself in readiness to start whenever he found himself free to go. I accordingly went to stay with my mother and my married sister at Chemnitz, and indulged in idleness and the unwonted dissipations of parties, dances, and long skating expeditions. At last, feeling I could not afford to wait any longer, I went off to Dessau to see Hagedorn, and found to my great disappointment that he was detained by important legal business in connection with his property near Munich, and could not yet fix a date for his departure. So it was settled that I was to go on to Paris without him, and instal myself in his apartment, 25, Rue Royale St. Honoré.