Abstract
This chapter presents a selection of facts about the city of San Antonio in the late 1850s and the early 1860s that touch on Houzeau’s life, in particular the dramatic events at the onset of the Civil War. We pinpoint Houzeau’s whereabouts and his real estate that he sold on the eve of his escape from Texas, which is now entirely submersed by the Alamodome complex.
Rather be a mason, if this is your profession. I found my profession in the end, and see me here, totally delighted to reduce myself to the admiration of a universe, about which I have before studied the great phenomena, and of which I humbly know a bit of its layout.
Soyez plutôt maçon si c’est votre métier. J’ai trouvé à la fin mon métier, et me voilà tout enchanté de me réduire à l’admiration d’un univers, dont j’ai étudié autrefois les grandes phénomènes, et dont je comprends humblement quelques dispositions.
Jean-Charles Houzeau to Nicolas-Constant Schmit
[1, letter 17, July 28, 1860]
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Sterken, C., King, A.A. (2020). San Antonio in Houzeau’s Times. In: Jean-Charles Houzeau's Escape from Texas. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46538-4_2
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