CHEVREUL AT A HUNDRED. 37 



of students, and thus gave origin to a title which has become famous 

 in connection with his name. He said, " Let the expression of the sym- 

 pathy you offer be given, not to the man of science, but to one who 

 might call himself the Dean of the Students of France, since it has 

 been given to him to continue without interruption, on the banks of 

 the Seine, studies which were begun at the end of the last century in 

 the beautiful land of Anjou." 



M. Chevreul has a considerable library at the museum, which has 

 been regularly increased by the accession of valuable books which his 

 son, a bibliophilist like himself, has helped him to find. His grand 

 life has been engaged in thought, and concentrated upon the studies 

 from which such useful discoveries have resulted. He has kept him- 

 self in good condition and happy by work and moderation. His wife, 

 who has now been dead for more than twenty years, attended to his 

 comforts with all the devotion which such superior minds are able to 

 invoke. His only son, a retired magistrate, lives at Dijon. The illus- 

 trious old man lives, therefore, alone, with his books for companions, 

 by the aid of which he is able to converse with his brethren, the great 

 ones of mankind, the Newtons and the Galileos. When not among his 

 books, he is at his laboratory in the Gobelins, where he goes on with 

 his experiments with a dexterity still quite juvenile. 



M. Chevreul possesses a large fortune, which is augmented from 

 year to year by the rewards of his scientific labors. His life therefore 

 passes along placidly, enlivened by the pleasure of seeing the closing 

 years of his career emphasized by ovations to his merit. He has wit- 

 nessed the birth of all the scientific discoveries of our century, and 

 has beheld the marvelous spectacle of the development of modern in- 

 dustry. 



M. Chevreul is tall, and bears to this day an erect body. Of ele- 

 gant manners and incomparable affability, he rarely fails to receive 

 you with a smile. His head is a very fine one, with a broad and 

 massive forehead, shaded with white locks. He is a man of wit as 

 well as of genius. Recently, when engaging a new preparator for his 

 laboratory, he said to him : " You must have a good deal of courage 

 to take this place ; I have killed four preparators already." We recol- 

 lect, says M. Tissandier, seeing him at a ball in the FJysee, at mid- 

 night of a winter night, fresh and lively, surrounded by ladies whom 

 he was gayly entertaining, with an exquisite and charming grace. 



M. Chevreul is very sober. He drinks nothing but water and beer, 

 except that, by the special request of Minister Goblet, he for the first 

 time in his life departed from his abstinence to drink a glass of cham- 

 pagne in response to the sentiment " Vive la France ! " at his century- 

 banquet ; and to his temperance, with his robust constitution and his 

 prudent, regular, and industrious life, he doubtless owes his survival to 

 so high an age. 



It is a grand and beautiful spectacle, M. Tissandier concludes, that 



