When Dr. Rothman thought his pupil ready for the university, he sent him up to Lund, and the head-master of the Latin School gave him the letter he must bring, to be admitted.  “Boys at school,” he wrote in it, “may be likened to young trees in orchard nurseries, where it sometimes happens that here and there among the saplings there are some that make little growth, or even appear as wild seedlings, giving no promise; but when afterwards transplanted to the orchard, make a start, branch out freely, and at last yield satisfactory fruit.”  By good luck, though, Carl ran across an old teacher from Wexioe, one of the few who had believed in him and was glad to see him.  He took him to the Rector and introduced him with warm words of commendation, and also found him lodgings under the roof of Dr. Kilian Stobaeus.

Dr. Stobaeus was a physician of renown, but not good company.  He was one-eyed, sickly, lame in one foot, and a gloomy hypochondriac to boot.  Being unable to get around to his patients, he always had one or two students to do the running for him and to learn as best they might, in doing it.  Carl found a young German installed there as the doctor’s right hand.  He also found a library full of books on botany, a veritable heaven for him.  But the gate was shut against him; the doctor had the key, and he saw nothing in the country lad but a needy student of no account.  Perhaps the Rector had passed the head-master’s letter along.  However, love laughs at locksmiths, and Carl Linnaeus was hopelessly in love with his flowers.  He got on the right side of the German by helping him over some hard stiles in the materia medica.  In return, his fellow student brought him books out of the library when the doctor had gone to bed, and Carl sat up studying the big tomes till early cockcrow.  Before the house stirred, the books were back on their shelves, the door locked, and no one was the wiser.

No one except the doctor’s old mother, whose room was across the yard.  She did not sleep well, and all night she saw the window lighted in her neighbor’s room.  She told the doctor that Carl Linnaeus fell asleep with the candle burning every single night, and sometime he would upset it and they would all be burned in their beds.  The doctor nodded grimly; he knew the young scamps.  No doubt they both sat up playing cards till dawn; but he would teach them.  And the very next morning, at two o’clock, up he stumped on his lame foot to Carl’s room, in which there was light, sure enough, and went in without knocking.

Carl was so deep in his work that he did not hear him at all, and the doctor stole up unperceived and looked over his shoulder.  There lay his precious books, which he thought safely locked in the library, spread out before him, and his pupil was taking notes and copying drawings as if his life depended upon it.  He gave a great start when Dr. Stobaeus demanded what he was doing, but owned up frankly, while the doctor frowned and turned over his notes, leaf by leaf.