Chapter 2

We were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference in our ages.

I need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute.

Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together.

Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.
She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home -- the sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons, tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers--she found ample scope for admiration and delight.
While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes.

The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.
Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.
On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native country.