In less than a year the fund had been raised.
Stéphane Lauzanne describes a second impressive moment in the life of Madame Curie. It was nearly a year after my talk with her. It was fifteen years since that scene at the University of Paris. These years had been spent in her laboratory; she had made no public appearance. It was in March, 1921, that Monsieur Lauzanne heard her voice again.
"I lifted the telephone receiver," he relates, "and heard these words: 'Madame Curie wishes to speak to you.' What extraordinary event—what tragedy, perhaps, might this not mean? And suddenly, over the wire came the sound of the voice which I had heard only once before, but which had stayed in my memory—the same voice which had once pronounced the words, 'When we consider the progress made by the theories of radio-activity since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century——'
"'I wanted to tell you that I am going to America,' she said. 'It was very hard for me to decide to go, because America is so far and so big. If some one did not come for me, I should probably never have made the trip. I should have been too frightened. But to this fear is added a great joy. I have devoted my life to the science of radio-activity and I know all we owe to America in the field of science. I am told you are among those who strongly favor this distant trip, so I wanted to tell you I have decided to go, but please don't let any one know about it.'
"This great woman—the greatest woman in France—was speaking haltingly, tremblingly, almost like a little girl. She, who handles daily a particle of radium more dangerous than lightning, was afraid when confronted by the necessity of appearing before the public."
A little later, when Madame Curie and I had embarked for America, where she was to receive her radium and other experimental material, I asked her if, the day I had first given her the promise, she had believed that American women would rally to her aid.
"No," she confessed honestly, "but I knew you were sincere."
About the time of her marriage, one of her relatives gave Madame Curie a gift of money to be used for a trousseau. It was not a great sum, but important to the poor student in Paris. To understand the significance of the use to which she put this fund, it is necessary to remember that Marie Sklodowska was young, and possessed physical beauty and charm. She was not without appreciation of the beautiful, and she could not possibly have been utterly unconscious of her own appearance. She had a young girl's natural interest in pretty clothes. She considered the purchase of a wedding gown and other personal belongings, and then, with her characteristic exactness, measured her needs and the future.
She was married in a simple dress she had brought from Poland, and her trousseau fund was spent on two bicycles, so that she and Pierre Curie might enjoy the beautiful country of France. That was their honeymoon.
One dream that Madame Curie held, and still holds unrealized, is the hope of a quiet little home of her own with a garden and hedge, and flowers and birds. During her American travels, she would frequently glance through the window as the train passed through a small town, and, spying some modest little house with a garden, would say, "I have always wanted such a little home."