Sublime

In the company of a young French medical doctor turned botanist, Aime Bonpland, Humboldt had departed from La Coruña, Spain, in June 1799, on a Spanish frigate, slipping past a British blockade in the dark of night, in the midst of a storm, and carrying with him a unique document from the Spanish government. He and Bonpland had been granted

Le garçon affamé qui part pour Toulouse n'a pas encore vingt-trois ans. Malgré son chapeau, ses cheveux, sa lavallière, il ne lui reste rien de l'avenue du Maine que les invisibles trésors de la poésie. Il ne lui reste rien non plus de Palmyre, sauf l'impalpable soif de la pureté. Mais les bordées de sa permission, les grossièretés de la caserne,

« l’homme le plus implacablement curieux de l’Histoire6 ».

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