At fourteen, Louis left Bienne, having finished his education, as he supposed, prior to entering the business house of his uncle, François Mayor, at Neuchâtel. That his young mind turned longingly towards a different future, may be seen from his desires written at this time on a sheet of foolscap.
"I wish to advance in the sciences, and for that I need D'Anville, Ritter, an Italian dictionary, a Strabo in Greek, Mannert and Thiersch; and also the works of Malte-Brun and Seyfert. I have resolved, as far as I am allowed to do so, to become a man of letters, and at present I can go no further: first, in ancient geography, for I already know all my note-books, and I have only such books as Mr. Rickly can lend me; I must have D'Anville or Mannert; second, in modern geography also, I have only such books as Mr. Rickly can lend me, and the Osterwold geography, which does not accord with the new divisions; I must have Ritter or Malte-Brun; third, for Greek I need a new grammar, and I shall choose Thiersch; fourth, I have no Italian dictionary, except one lent me by Mr. Moltz; I must have one; fifth, for Latin I need a larger grammar than the one I have, and I should like Seyfert; sixth, Mr. Rickly tells me that, as I have a taste for geography, he will give me a lesson in Greek (gratis) in which we would translate Strabo, provided I can find one. For all this I ought to have about twelve louis. I should like to stay at Bienne till the month of July, and afterward serve my apprenticeship in commerce at Neuchâtel for a year and a half. Then I should like to pass four years at a university in Germany, and finally finish my studies at Paris, where I would stay about five years. Then, at the age of twenty-five, I could begin to write."
At this early age, then, he was thinking of being an author!
He begged his parents to defer the business project for two years, that he might study at the College of Lausanne. They were willing and glad to please their boy; but they knew from experience the ills of poverty, and they hoped to save him from it by a wise choice of a life-work.
They gratified him, however, and he went to Lausanne. His uncle, Dr. Mathias Mayor, a physician of Lausanne, seeing that the boy was deeply interested in anatomy, advised that he should study medicine; so this was decided upon, as being more in accord with Louis' tastes than business.
As poor Vincenzio Galileo found it a difficult matter to make a wool merchant or a doctor out of a boy destined to be a man of science, so did the father of Louis Agassiz.
At seventeen, Louis left Lausanne for the medical school at Zurich. Here he became the friend as well as pupil of Professor Schinz, who held the chair of Natural History and Physiology. He gave young Agassiz a key to his private library, and also to his collection of birds; of course, the love for natural history grew stronger. Both boys, for Auguste had come to Zurich with his brother, were too poor to buy books even when they cost but a dollar a volume. The Swiss minister was saving to the uttermost to pay for board and decent clothes for his sons, to say nothing of books. Therefore the use of Schinz's library was a great favor.
Said Agassiz in after years, "My inability to buy books was, perhaps, not so great a misfortune as it seemed to me; at least, it saved me from too great dependence on written authority. I spent all my time in dissecting animals and in studying human anatomy, not forgetting my favorite amusements of fishing and collecting. I was always surrounded with pets, and had at this time some forty birds flying about my study, with no other home than a large pine-tree in the corner. I still remember my grief when a visitor, entering suddenly, caught one of my little favorites between the floor and the door, and he was killed before I could extricate him. Professor Schinz's private collection of birds was my daily resort, and I then described every bird it contained, as I could not afford to buy even a text-book of ornithology.
"I also copied with my own hand, having no means of purchasing the work, two volumes of Lamarck's 'Animaux sans Vertèbres,' and my dear brother copied another half-volume for me. I finally learned that the study of the things themselves was far more attractive than the books I so much coveted, and when, at last, large libraries became accessible to me, I usually contented myself with turning over the leaves of the volumes on natural history, looking at the illustrations, and recording the titles of the works, that I might readily consult them for identification of such objects as I should have an opportunity of examining in nature."
The boys remained two years at Zurich. One vacation, as they were walking home, the family having moved from Motier to Orbe, they were overtaken by a gentleman who asked them to ride, shared his lunch with them, and took them to their own door. Some days afterward he wrote to M. Agassiz that he had been so impressed by his son Louis that he wished to adopt him and provide for him through life.