EULOGY ON AMPERE. 169 



slight improvement. His want of great age, too, seemed a source of 

 hope, for no one recollected that Ampere might have said, with the Dutch 

 artist Van Orbeeck, "Count double, gentlemen, count double, for I have 

 lived day and night !" 



Our associate did not share the hopes of his friends. When leaving 

 Paris he knew himself near death, proof of which I have found in a let- 

 ter recently sent to me, in his answer to the urgent exhortations of tlie 

 cbaplaiu of the college at Marseilles. " Thanks, M. Abbe, thanks ; before 

 starting on my journey I performed all my religious duties." Amjjere's 

 resignation in his last moments astonished all who knew his excitable 

 disposition, his lively imagination and warm heart. !N"o one ever ex- 

 pected to find him display the calmness of that ancient philosopher, 

 who, on the bed of death, requested to have all disturbing influences 

 removed, in order, he said, to be able the better to observe what would 

 take place at the exact moment of the separation of soul and body. A 

 few moments before our associate lost entire consciousness, M, Des- 

 chape, provisor of the college of Marseilles, beginning to read in a low 

 voice the Imitation, Ampere remarked that he " knew the book by heart." 

 These were, I believe, his last words. In addition to the fatal chronic 

 affection of the lungs, he was now seized with a high fever; and on the 

 10th of June, 1836, at five o'clock in the morning, our illustrious associate, 

 sinking under the accumulated bodily and mental sufferings of sixty 

 years, as Buffon so beautifully expresses it, "died before he had finished 

 living." 



The same day the wires of Marseilles transmitted the sad news to 

 Paris, where it excited, as you remember, the most j)rofound and uni- 

 versal grief. And let no one think this swift ferial messenger dropped, in 

 this instance, its official role to intrude itself into the domain of private 

 life ; for Ampere's death was a public calamity. 



[The following sketch, ■which Avas originally published in Blackwood's Mugazine, 

 furnishes an illustration of some traits of the character of Ampere as presf-JuvCd by 

 Arago:] 



Ampere, the friend of Davy, and whilome one of the great iiatural phi- 

 losophers of France, is selected for this sketch, not from the space he at 

 present occupies in science, but for la 2)ctite comedie que void,* and the 

 amiable old age he exhibits. You see a venerable octegenaire^ of small 

 stature, clad in a coat of grotesque cut, on which the marks of climac- 

 tercial decay are as visible as ui)on the excellent old man who has borne 

 it for a quarter of a century. He has parted with his teeth, his mem- 

 ory, and his elasticity of step, but he retains his honliommie, his delight- 

 ful mannerism, and ever and anon exhibits some flickerings of that en- 

 thusiasm in the cause of science with which he began life and without 

 which nothing is to be done. I dare not, however, meddle with tlie 

 sjilendid fragments of that genius which so often startles you into the 

 conviction that a great man is addressing you. J have been i)resent at 



*The little farce which follows. tAn eighty year old. 



