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A BIOGRAPHY
217
married her father’s grandfather—a marriage by which
that gentleman forfeited his title of "prince," then
possessed by the family.1
All this was not only a peculiarity of temperament
in Sonya, but underlay her intellectual nature. Her
talents were of the productive order, and at the same
time she was very receptive by nature, and required
stimulus from the genius of others in order to do
productive work herself.
This is the reason why her whole scientific career was
occupied solely with the development of the ideas of
her great teacher.
In literature she required intercourse with persons
similarly occupied.
With such a principle underlying her whole
character and intelligence, it was only natural that life in
such a small town as Stockholm should be altogether
monotonous to her. She could only really live in the
great European capitals. There she found the mental
stimulus she needed.
She spent the Christmas of 1884 in Berlin. On her
return thence she made use, for the first time, of the
expression she afterward used every year, and which
so wounded and hurt her friends. "The road from
Stockholm to Malmö," she said, "is the most
beautiful line I have ever seen; but the road from Malmö to
Stockholm is the ugliest, dullest, and most tiresome I
have ever known."
My heart bleeds when I think how often, with an
ever-growing bitterness in her heart, she had to take
that journey, which at last brought her to an early
grave.
A letter to my brother, written from Berlin during
that Christmas, shows how deeply melancholic her
1 Appendix E.
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