It was a pleasure to be with Herzen, although later on, this fellow wasn't known for any achievements in natural philosophy.
But Arthur could see that this university graduate from the mathematics and physics department of Moscow University was a person with wide interests and a genuine love for reading.
When talking with someone like him, you don't need to stick to a topic; you can speak whatever comes to mind, because regardless of the subject, Herzen always had something to say.
The two of them talked from Cuvier's "Earth Surface Catastrophe Theory" to De Condor's "Morphology of Plants", then to Humboldt's 30-volume masterpiece "A Journey to the Tropical Regions of the New Continent", Heine's "North Sea Collection", Dumas's "The Count of Monte Cristo", Tennyson's "Lyric Poetry Collection", and even the unspeakable little stories Eld created in his spare time.
