I put on my clothes, suspended
my botanical case, in which I rejoiced still to find my northern
lichens, round my black polonaise, drew on my boots, laid the written
paper on my bed, and, as the door opened, I was already far on the way
to the Thebais.
As I took the way along the Syrian coast, on which I for the last time
had wandered from home, I perceived my poor Figaro coming toward me.
This excellent poodle, which had long expected his master at home,
seemed to desire to trace him out. I stood still and called to him.
He sprang barking toward me, with a thousand moving assurances of his
inmost and most extravagant joy. I took him up under my arm, for in
truth he could not follow me, and brought him with me home again.
I found all in its old order, and returned gradually, as my strength
was recruited, to my former employment and mode of life, except that
I kept myself for a whole year out of the, to me, wholly insupportable
polar cold. And thus, my dear Chamisso, I live to this day. My boots
are no worse for the wear, as that very learned work of the celebrated
Tieckius, _De Rebus Gestis Pollicilli_, at first led me to fear. Their
force remains unimpaired, my strength only decays; yet I have the
comfort to have exerted it in a continuous and not fruitless pursuit
of one object. I have, so far as my boots could carry me, become more
fundamentally acquainted than any man before me with the earth,
its shape, its elevations, its temperatures, the changes of its
atmosphere, the exhibitions of its magnetic power, and the life upon
it, especially in the vegetable world.
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