Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[313] than yourself) suffer from my silence. I count with reason upon their indulgence. The tone of your excellent letters shows that I am right. You spoil me. Your letters continue to be always warm and affectionate. I receive few like them. Since two thirds of the letters addressed to me (partly copies of letters written to the king or the ministers) remain unanswered, I am blamed, charged with being a parvenu courtier, an apostate from science. This bitterness of individual claims does not diminish my ardent desire to be useful. I act oftener than I answer. I know that I like to do good, and this consciousness gives me tranquillity in spite of my over burdened life. You are happy, my dear Agassiz, in the more simple and yet truly proud position which you have created for yourself. You ought to take satisfaction in it as the father of a family, as an illustrious savant, as the originator and source of so many new ideas, of so many great and noble conceptions.

Your admirable work on the fossil fishes draws to a close. The last number, so rich in discoveries, and the prospectus, explaining the true state of this vast publication, have soothed all irritation regarding it. It is because I am so attached to you that I rejoice in the calmer