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174
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
known Sönya to be really happy. A little later—even
a year later—it was no longer quite the same.
"Immediately after our arrival at Heidelberg, the
lectures began. During the day we were all three at
the University, and the evenings were also devoted to
study. We had rarely time, during the week, to take
walks, but on Sundays we always made long
excursions outside Heidelberg, and sometimes we went to
the theater at Mannheim.
" We had very few acquaintances, and very seldom
called on any of the professors’ families. From the
first Sönya attracted the attention of her teachers by
her extraordinary talent for mathematics. Professor
Könisberg, and the celebrated scientist Kirchhoff,
whose lectures on practical physics she attended, both
spoke of her as something quite marvelous. Her fame
spread so widely in the little town that people
sometimes stopped in the streets to look at the wonderful
Russian, and she came home and told me laughingly
how a poor woman, with a child on her arm, had
stopped and pointed to her, saying aloud to the child,
’ Look! look! there is the girl who is so diligent at
school!’
" Retiring and bashful, and almost awkward in her
manner to her fellow-students and professors, Sönya
always entered the University with downcast eyes; she
never spoke to her companions, if she could avoid it,
during the time of study. Her behavior enchanted the
German professors, who always admire bashfulness in
a woman, especially in one so charming and young, and,
withal, one who was studying so abstract a science as
mathematics. This bashfulness was not in the least
put on, but entirely natural to Sönya at this time. I
remember very well when she came home one day and
told me how she had discovered an error in the demon-
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