The motto ‘Carpe diem,’ which I had found in my father’s Horace and had engraved upon my seal ring, unexpectedly gained a new significance by no longer translating it “enjoy,” but “use the day,” till the time came when the two meanings seemed identical.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The apprenticeship.

Firmly as I had resolved to follow the counsel of Horace, and dear as earnest labour was becoming, I still lacked method, a fixed goal towards which to move with firm tread in the seclusion to which my sufferings still condemned me.

I had relinquished the study of the law.  It seemed more than doubtful whether my health would ever permit me to devote myself to a practical profession or an academic career, and my interest in jurisprudence was too slight to have it allure me to make it the subject of theoretical studies.

Egyptology, on the contrary, not only attracted me but permitted me to devote my whole strength to it so far as my health would allow.  True, Champollion, the founder of this science, termed it “a beautiful dowerless maiden,” but I could venture to woo her, and felt grateful that, in choosing my profession, I could follow my inclination without being forced to consider pecuniary advantages.

The province of labour was found, but with each step forward the conviction of my utter lack of preparation for the new science grew clearer.

Just then the kind heart of Wilhelm Grimm’s wife brought her to me with some delicious fruit syrup made by her own hands.  When I told her what I was doing and expressed a wish to have a guide in my science, she promised to tell “the men” at home, and within a few days after his sister-in-law’s visit Jacob was sitting with me.

He inquired with friendly interest how my attention had been called to Egyptology, what progress I had made, and what other sciences I was studying.

After my reply he shook his venerable head with its long grey locks, and said, smiling: 

“You have been putting the cart before the horse.  But that’s the way with young specialists.  They want to become masters in the workshops of their sciences as a shoemaker learns to fashion boots.  Other things are of small importance to them; and yet the special discipline first gains value in connection with the rest or the wider province of the allied sciences.  Your deciphering of hieroglyphics can only make you a dragoman, and you must become a scholar in the higher sense, a real and thorough one.  The first step is to lay the linguistic foundation.”

This was said with the engaging yet impressively earnest frankness characteristic of him.  He himself had never investigated Egyptian matters closely, and therefore did not seek to direct my course minutely, but advised me, in general, never to forget that the special science was nothing save a single chord, which could only produce its full melody with those that belonged to the same lute.