Explore "From Memory's Shrine" by Carmen Sylva on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Another much valued friend of ours was the great scholar Bernays. He also was a constant visitor whilst we were living in Bonn, often sitting for hours beside my mother's invalid couch, talking to her. But he never partook of a meal in our house, and my childish mind was much troubled at this. His explanation was, that being a Jew, he must avoid being drawn into anything contrary to the customs and observances of his race. For his conscientious scruples, no less than for his profound learning and the breadth and liberality of his views, my parents entertained the very highest respect and admiration, my mother in particular never wearying of hearing him discourse on one or other of those deeper problems that will forever occupy men's minds, rejoicing meanwhile to feel her own store of knowledge increase and her intelligence expand in this congenial atmosphere.
Bernays was not merely well-read in the Jewish Scriptures, but seemed to know the New Testament also better than we did ourselves, and his ideas on religious topics were always striking and impressive. I did not then know of his intimate friendship with Ernest Renan, and of the correspondence they kept up. I was indeed at this time considered much too young to be admitted even as a listener to the long and serious conversations -- of such absorbing interest to both my parents -- that took place between them and Bernays. The latter, I have since heard, felt it a great hardship that he should be excluded, on account of his nationality, from holding a professorship at the University, and this in spite of his being in his own line probably the finest scholar Bonn has ever produced. As for my own childish impression, I confess that it was chiefly one of awe at the solemn, rather severe-looking personage, whose eyes seemed to wear an expression of such unchanging gravity behind their dark spectacles. He was in point of fact much too short-sighted to see other faces clearly, and thus no ray of recognition ever lit up his own.