Baron Cuvier's Historical Eloge of Baron Ramond. 9 



nate prince in so abominable a labyrinth. But while this de- 

 cision absolved him in the eyes of the public, it gave only a 

 new virulence to the hatred with which he was persecuted. 

 At first confined in his Abbey of Chaise-Dieu, in the most 

 rugged mountains of Auvergne, he is received there by the 

 monks only with a mock respect ; the dreaded minister is still 

 there, and the prior is his lieutenant. Spies beset the exile ; 

 — insolence is on every face, and he has reason to dread the 

 poniard and the poison. M. Ramond alone continues near 

 him, watches over his safety, and gives him every consolation. 

 These rigours did not begin to subside till the disturbances in 

 178T made the government reflect on its position ; and so 

 difficult is it to renounce a bad course, that it is always with a 

 slow step that we return to justice. The Cardinal was not re- 

 called, but he was permitted to retire into another of his 

 Abbeys at Marmoutier-les-Tours, a rich country, where he 

 experienced a kindness which, since his misfortunes, had been 

 unknown to him. 



M. Ramond, who had now become less necessary to him, 

 availed himself of this opportunity of travelling among the 

 Pyrenees, which he had long desired to compare with the 

 Alps, and it was during that journey that he composed his 

 first account of it which appeared at the beginning of 1789. * 

 It is neither less animated nor less intellectual than his 06- 

 servations on Switzerland. It contains ingenious remarks on 

 the glaciers and on the equilibrium of heat and cold which 

 preserve their limits. The people who inhabit the valleys 

 were also the objects of his study. He inspires us with sym- 

 pathy for those persecuted races known under the name of 

 Cagots, and he inquires into their origin. But what is par- 

 ticularly interesting for the sciences, we find here the first 

 germs of his General Theory of Mountains as well as his 

 ideas on the Laws by which their vegetation is regulated, — 

 germs, however, which did not assume their scientific form till 

 some years afterwards, during his compulsory residence in the 



• Observations faites dans les Pyrenees, pour servir de suite a des ob- 

 servations sur les Alpes inserees dans une traduction des Lettres de Coxe 

 sur la Suisse, 2 vol. in 8vo. Paris, Belin, 1789. 



