MEMOIR OF GEOFFEOY SAINT HILAIRE. 163 



that which struck him with most consternation was the imprisonment 

 of Haiiy. Hastening as soon as he heard of it to Danbenton and 

 other members of the Academy of Sciences, he procured in the name 

 of that body a petition for the release of their distinguished associate. 

 The order of enhirgement was signed at ten o'clock at night, and 

 GeofFroy instantly bore it in person to the prison. But here a new 

 difficulty presented itself. "These great men," said Fontenelle, in 

 speaking of the illustrious class of persons, whom none knew better 

 than himself, "these great men are children ;" and Haiiy especially 

 united to the most astonishing penetration of intellect the simplest 

 of hearts. In the midst of such dangers as threatened him, Geoffrey 

 found him wholly absorbed in reasserting his minerals, which had 

 been thrown into confusion at the time of his arrest, and which he 

 had succeeded in having brought to the prison. On no consideration 

 would he consent to their removal at such an hour, and he was fixed, 

 moreover, in his determination to hear mass the next morning before 

 his departure. Accordingly, morning being come and mass duly heard, 

 Haiiy tranquill}^ withdrew to his humble cell and to his friend Lho- 

 mond, who, in turn, had been delivered by Tallien, one of his former 

 pupils. But the cells they had quitted were destined to no long 

 familiarity with their occupants : it was the eve of the terrible mas- 

 sacres of September. 



Exhausted by violent emotions Geoflfroy became ill, and retired to 

 his family. The friends he left at Paris, though still overwhelmed by 

 the tempest, did not cease to cherish a concern for him. "I communi- 

 cated your letter to M. Lhomond," Haiiy writes to him. "as soon as 

 received, and we have never been so gay since you left us." To 

 Daubenton, Haiiy said : "Love and adopt my young deliverer;" and 

 the injunction was observed to the letter. On the return of Geoffroy 

 in 1793 he was received with marked affection by the now aged pro- 

 fessor. We are at liberty to believe that, at a time of life when per- 

 sonal hopes are becoming extinguished, there may enter into the 

 attachment of age for youth something of a hope to survive in the 

 gratitude of a later generation. But the effective services of Dau- 

 benton were soon called into requisition, for the place of superin- 

 tendent of the cabinet of zoology in the Jardin des Plantes having 

 been left vacant by M. de Lacepede, Daubenton asked and obtained 

 it for his young friend. 



The Garden of Plants, founded by Louis XIH, enlarged by Louis 

 XIY, and illustrated by the labors of Buffon, had become through 

 those labors the centre of modern natural history. In 1790 Dauben- 

 ton had presented to the Constituent Assembly the plan of a vast 

 and complete institution, worthy of the ideas which had been com- 

 municated to him by the great naturalist himself. Two years later 

 Bernardin de Saint Pierre, superintendent for a short time of the 

 garden, called for the establishment of a menagerie, referring to 

 the fact that Buffon had long desired to have that of Versailles, and 

 adding that "the most useful remarks of that eloquent writer were 

 inspired by the animals which he had himself studied, and his best- 

 colored delineations were those of which they Avere the models; for- 

 the thoughts of nature," said Saint Pierre, " carry with them their 



