176 MEMOIR OF DUCROTAY DE BLAINVILLE. 



ence of the head of a family who conceals from the son who should support the 

 honor of his name none of the rude obligations of existence, is often only appre- 

 ciated after a long series of deceptions. At the age of nineteen, wishing to enter 

 into public service as an engineer, Henri de Blainville passed some months at 

 Rouen in a school of design. The director of this establishment wrote to the 

 mother of his pupil : " The character of the young man is intractable; his heart, 

 though vindictive, is not unrelenting; his greatest passion is a love of learning; 

 all the rest is a chaos of ill-combined ideas." 



To finish his studies he came to Paris, and scarcely was he there when even 

 the shadow of authority disappeared; he lost his mother. Delivered thence- 

 forth to his own guidance, too much independence became to him a dangerous 

 snare ; he abandoned himself to all the passions of his age, and surrounded by 

 trifling companions, succeded very quickly and very gaily in dissipating his 

 whole patrimony. 



Having attained this natural result of the life he was leading, he began to 

 reflect, and comprehended the necessity of supplying the resources of which he 

 had robbed his future existence. In his first efiorts he did no more than put 

 forth a restless activity. By turns he appeared as a poet and essayist among 

 his friends, a zealous musician at the conservatory, and, in a celebrated studio, 

 a painter and designer of no little skill. Two lofty principles, in the mean time, 

 survived in the soul of this young man — an exalted respect for his birth and a 

 love of knowledge. 



The first of these two sentiments had, in truth, its perils; it gave rise to sin- 

 gular pretensions. M. de Blainville had preserved all the illusions of the 

 noblesse of the preceding age to such an extent that he could never, even when 

 his views had become sobered, entirely divest himself of the idea that by royal 

 prescript he was endowed with peculiar privileges. Among these, as that of 

 censure and authoritative assertion appeared to him the most precious, he made 

 use of it always and everywhere, and this rendered intercourse with him some- 

 what impracticable to such as did not choose to admit these obsolete claims of 

 feudalism. 



The ardor for instruction, combined with the pious respect for family, saved 

 this restless nature by directing its extraordinary energy towards a noble aim. 

 When, shaking off the last delusions of an idle youth, our fiery gentleman found, 

 on attaining his twenty-eighth year, that he was ruined, without career and 

 Avilhout family, if a bitter regret sprung up within his heart he repressed it, and 

 appealing to a vigorous and unsubdued spirit, he put forth, in order to retrieve 

 himself, a courage worthy of his ancestors. 



The crafty Phrygian slave, in ancient comedy, might exclaim : Buy yowr 

 master. M. de Blainville, though not indisposed to the same course, judged it 

 more prudent to comply with the tendencies of his age. Chance had conducted 

 him to the course of physics which Lefevre Gineau was then holding at the 

 College of France; and here was revealed to him a new charm, that of serious 

 application. He had presented himself to the professor as a modest neophyte, 

 but soon made himself sufiiciently appreciated to be admitted into a house where 

 the associates of M. Grineau, all connected with the highest class of instruction, 

 were accustomed to assemble. It was in this circle of eminent men that, for 

 the first time, he recognized his vocation. Nothing harmonized better with his 

 tastes and turn of mind than the authority of the chair and the dogmatic tone 

 of the master. The commanding influence which superiority of knowledge ex- 

 ercises over men appeared to him the most enviable of attainments. He believed 

 that he had discovered the path which would one day conduct him to distinc- 

 tion. From this moment persevering and ardent labor absorbed all his powers. 

 Submitting to judicious counsels, he entered, by a scrutinizing analysis of the 

 human organization, upon a career of original research, and made such extra- 

 ordinary efforts and rapid progress that after two years passed in the amphi- 



