REMINISCENCES OF DECEASED SAVANTS. 23 



vous system, were at that time most eagerly discussed. Claude Bernard 

 said very little, but what he did say was terse and to the point. He 

 only became excited when anybody undertook to question the experi- 

 ments and achievements of his teacher Magendie, whose assistant he 

 afterward became at the College de France. 



While he afterward rose step by step from one dignity and distinction 

 to another, ever steadily pursuing those memorable researches which 

 made him the foremost physiologist of our times, I lost sight of him as 

 a personal acquaintance. I came to Paris only in vacation-time, and 

 then Claude Bernard was at his country-seat in the environs of his 

 birthplace, Lyons. If after a youth of terrible privations very often 

 he did not know in the morning how to get his dinner he could now 

 feel happy, seeing that everything which the ambition of the savant 

 could wish for was offered to him, the highest positions at the univer- 

 sities and in the learned societies, a seat in the Senate, for which he 

 was indebted to his scientific eminence, and not to any political ser- 

 vices, he was weighed down, on the other hand, by serious bodily ail- 

 ments and by the saddest of domestic misfortunes. At first I did not 

 recognize him when, pleasantly and kindly, as of old, but gray-haired, 

 and with his head inclined on one side, he stepped up to me at a 

 provincial meeting, and reminded me of the old times in the Rue Co- 

 peau and the Pitie Hospital. " I have passed through a great deal 

 since that time," he said to me, " which may have left some traces in 

 my appearance for I notice that you look at me in surprise but let 

 us chat a little about those times and about our old friends ; it does 

 me good ! " 



At the same time I became acquainted with Leverrier. As I 

 have said already in this article, I had been brought into contact with 

 the leaders of the two great parties in the Academy of Sciences, and 

 had been kindly received by both. In the salons of Brongniart and 

 Milne-Edwards I saw most of the naturalists ; at the house of Martin 

 de Strasbourg, as the well-known deputy was called, I frequently met 

 Francois Arago, who was then intent upon learning German in order 

 to be able to distinguish the pronunciations of Encke and Hencke, 

 whom, as official reporter of the Academy, he had often occasion to 

 mention. But that genuine son of La Provence was eminently unsuc- 

 cessful in that respect, nor did he ever learn to pronounce my own 

 name correctly ; but, as his German teacher had him to read Schiller's 

 " William Tell," the vogt ' of the tragedy became confounded in his 

 head with the living Vogt, and to the great merriment of everybody he 

 called me " Gessler," to which name he obstinately clung. 



One day a young man entered my room. From his appearance I 

 should have unhesitatingly taken him for the son of a Westphalian 

 peasant ; for he was fair-haired, rosy-cheeked, and solidly built. It 

 was Leverrier, who delivered a sort of address to me, confounding Vogt 



1 Governor. 



