When he came home to dinner, he longed for his wife, so that he might
tell her of his success, for she had always been his truest friend,
the only human being who had never been jealous or envious. Now he
missed this loyal companion on whose approval he could count as a
matter of course; never once had she contradicted him, for since he
never told her more than the practical result of his researches, there
was no room for argument. For a moment the thought occurred to him
that he might make friends with his son; but they knew each other too
little; their relationship was that of officer and private soldier.
His superior rank did not permit him to make advances; moreover, he
regarded the boy with suspicion, because the latter possessed a keener
intellect and had read a number of new books which were unknown to
him; occasionally it even happened that the father, the professor,
plainly revealed his ignorance to his son, the school-boy. In such
cases the father was either compelled to dismiss the argument, with a
few contemptuous remarks to "these new follies," or peremptorily order
the school-boy to attend to his lessons. Once or twice, in self-defence,
the son had produced one or other of his school-books; the professor
had lost his temper and wished the new school-books to hell.

And so it came about that the father devoted himself to his
collections of dried plants and the son went his own way.

They lived in a quiet street to the left of the Observatory, in a
small, one-storey house, built of bricks, and surrounded by a large
garden; the garden was once the property of the Horticultural Society,
and had come into the professor's possession by inheritance. But since
he studied descriptive botany, and took no interest in the much more
interesting subjects of the physiology and morphology of plants, a