Once he even spoke of his youth and the days which determined his destiny.

The following event seems to me especially worth recording.
When a young and wholly unknown student he had gone to Paris to bring his discovery of fulminic acid to the notice of the Academy.

On one of the famous Tuesdays he had waited vainly for the introduction of his work, and at the close of the session he rose sadly to leave the hall, when an elderly academician in whose hand he thought he had seen his treatise addressed a few words to him concerning his discovery in very fluent French and invited him to dine the following Thursday.

Then the stranger suddenly disappeared, and Liebig, with the painful feeling of being considered a very uncivil fellow, was obliged to let the Thursday pass without accepting the invitation so important to him.

But on Saturday some one knocked at the door of his modest little room and introduced himself as Alexander von Humboldt's valet.