162 MEMOIR OF GEOFFROY SAINT HILAIRE. 



translations which excessively wearied him. As a scholar he had 

 little assiduity, and manifested no taste for anything but physics. 



On leaving college many advantages were offered to determine him 

 to the church, but this destination he steadfastly declined. His 

 father, himself an advocate, proposed jurisprudence, but a short trial 

 ended in disgust. From law he passed to medicine, but with no better 

 result. To the adventurous spirit which already governed him it 

 w^ould seem that a career more free and more remote from the beaten 

 paths was necessary for satisfaction or success. 



Urged by a secret impulse towards the sciences, Geoffrey wished 

 to follow the higher courses of instruction, and with this view was 

 permitted to unite himself with the students at the college of the 

 Cardinal Lemoine. The professors of this establishment were eccle- 

 siastics. Here the good and judicious Lhomond consecrated his life 

 to the production of works for the instruction of youth, whose very 

 simplicity has maintained their superiority as models of that class of 

 compositions, and Haiiy, a regent of the college, had just made that 

 celebrated discovery in mineralogy which changed the face of the 

 science and inscribed his own name among those of men of the highest 

 scientific genius. Lhomond, next to childhood, loved nothing so much 

 as plants, and Hay had been led, through his devotion to this ven- 

 erable friend, to join in the same botanical pursuits. In their peace- 

 ful promenades they were now followed, though at a distance, by a 

 young scholar, who burned with no desire so great as that of being 

 permitted to associate himself with these distinguished men. Nor 

 was the opportunity long deferred : a casual interview occurred, in 

 which Lhomond and Haiiy were so much touched with the ingenuous 

 expressions of interest and respect on the part of their young inter- 

 locutor that they thenceforth admitted him to a cordial intimacy. 



Under the inspiration of Haiiy, Geoffrey was not backward in 

 conceiving a passion for mineralogy. Daubenton was then delivering a 

 course in this science at the college of France, and it was his custom, 

 after each lecture, to interrogate his pupils. Happening one day to 

 question Geoffroy on crystallography, he was surprised at the answers, 

 and observed, with great good nature : ' ' Young man, you know 

 more about it than I do." "I am but the echo of M. Haiiy," re- 

 plied Geoffroy. The gratitude implied in this ingenuous avowal did 

 not fail to excite the interest of the professor, and that interest was 

 ripened by incidents which soon followed into a lively attachment. 



It was now 1792, and Geoffroy was twenty years of age ; he began 

 his serious life amidst the distractions which then afflicted our country. 

 All the instruction he had received had been derived from priests, 

 and at this deplorable epoch it was sufficient to bear that title to be 

 marked for persecution. 



His former masters of the college of Navarre were arrested and 

 imprisoned in the church of Saint Firmin, converted into a prison. 

 Geoffroy succeeded in obtaining access to them, and urged upon them 

 a means of escape which he had devised, but which, animated by a 

 sentiment of common interest with their companions in misfor- 

 tune, they declined adopting. Later, however, he succeeded in 

 saving some of them, though at the peril of his own life. But 



