Measuring the World Read Online Free PDF

the air, the water, the earth, and the color of the sky. He practiced dismantling and reassembling every instrument until he could do it blind, standing on one leg, in rain, or surrounded by a herd of fly-tormented cows. The locals decided he was mad. But that too, he realized, was something he must get used to. Once he tied one arm behind his back for a week, so as to become accustomed to physical insult and pain. Because he was bothered by his uniform, he had another one tailored for him and wore it even to bed. The whole trick was never to let anything get to one, he said to Frau Schobel, his landlady, and asked for another glass of the greenish whey that made him feel sick.
    Only after that did he go to Paris, where his brother was now living as a private person, to raise his dazzlingly intelligent children according to a strict system of his own. His sister-in-law couldn't stand him. He spooked her, she said, his constant activity struck her as a form of madness, and most of all, he seemed to her a distorted copy, a caricature even, of her husband.
    He couldn't really contradict her, was her husband's reply, and it had never been easy to be so completely responsible for all his brother's follies, or be his brother's keeper.
    At the Academy, Humboldt gave lectures on the conductivity of human nerves. He was standing right there in the drizzle on the trampled grass outside the city when the last section of longitude was measured that connected Paris to the Pole. As it was completed, everyone took off their hats and shook hands: one ten-millionth of the distance, captured in metal, would become the unit of all future linear measurements. People wanted to name it “the meter.” It always filled Humboldt with exultation when something was measured; this time he was drunk with enthusiasm. The excitement stopped him from sleeping for several nights.
    He made enquiries about expeditions. A certain Lord Bristol wanted to go to Egypt, but soon landed in prison as a spy. Humboldt learned that the Directory wanted to send a group of researchers to the South Seas under the command of the great Bougainville, but Bougainville was as old as the hills, stone deaf, sat in a chair of state muttering into thin air and making gestures of command that nobody could make head or tail of. When Humboldt bowed to him, he blessed him with a pontifical hand movement and waved him away. The Directory replaced him with the officer Baudin. This man received Humboldt warmly and promised him everything. Shortly thereafter he disappeared along with all the money the state had given him.
    One evening there was a young man sitting on the stairs of the house where Humboldt lived, drinking schnapps out of a silver flask; he cursed violently as Humboldt accidentally trod on his hand. Humboldt apologized and they got to talking. The man's name was Aimé Bonpland, and it turned out he had been hoping to sign on with Baudin. He was twenty-five, tall, a bit ragged, not much scarred by smallpox, and had only one missing tooth, right in front. The two of them looked at each other, and later neither of them would have been able to say whether they had shared an intimation that each was going to be the most important person in the other's life, or whether it just seemed that way in retrospect.
    According to Bonpland, he came from La Rochelle and had endured the low skies of the provinces like the roof of a prison. Every day he had wanted to get out, had become a military doctor, but the university wouldn't recognize his title. While he was finishing his final exams, he had studied botany, he loved tropical plants, and now he had no idea what he was going to do. Back to La Rochelle—he'd rather be dead!
    Humboldt enquired if he might embrace him.
    No, said Bonpland, appalled.
    They both had similar things behind them, said Humboldt, and the same ahead of them, and if they got together, who was going to stop them? He put out his hand.
    Bonpland didn't