MEMOIR OF LOUIS JACQUES THENARD. 379 



I Blioukl communicate to my mother. To crown my good fortune, I carried 

 with me a book which she had ayked me for : The Imitation of Jesus Christ, 

 in hirge letters, such as she coukl read without spectack>s. When this copy, 

 so rarely to be met with, fell into my hands, I had regarded it as the happiest 

 of my discoveries." At the maternal fireside, the simple habits of his child- 

 hood were resumed and old associations cordially refreshed. Here he again 

 listened to the tender counsels of his mother, who, at the moment of parting, 

 said to him : " It is noAV time for you to marry." 



This admonition fell on no unwilling ears. From the time when he first 

 received the patronage of Vauquelin, Thenard had formed the acquaintance 

 of a young chemist, named Humblot, to whom birth and fortune had 

 opened a path as smooth as his own was rugged. In order to sustain the 

 courage of Thenard, Humblot had often cited to him the instance of his own 

 father-in-law, who, at first simply a laborer in a convent garden, had contrived 

 to evince his talent as a painter, and by the opportune development of other 

 talents in the service of his country during the Revolution, had achieved for 

 himself both distinction and fortune ; so that it was said of him by a great 

 man, whose confidence he had won : " Conte is capable of creating the arts 

 of France in the midst of the deserts of Arabia." Received into the intimacy 

 of this family, Thenard, whose origin and mediocrity of fortune were well 

 known to them, met with warm sympathy in all his successes ; yet was it left 

 to the sagacity of Madame Humblot to divine, which as a daughter of Conte 

 she was well qualified to do, that he was silently waiting for some still greater 

 success in order to acquire the boldness to ask for her daughter — whom Thenard 

 confessed to be for him only too fair and too rich. This obstacle not proving 

 insurmountable, our savant married ; and as he was a man Avho ordered afiairs 

 wit-ii judgment, and knew how to enter into the details of practical life, he 

 began from that time to build up the large fortune in which were blended the 

 results of his labor, his alliance, and his skilful management. 



The constantly increasing success of his lectures had become, with Thenard, 

 the most sensitive test of his self-love. At each of them he seemed to put 

 forth all the ardor of a general on the battle-field ; leaving nothing unprovided 

 for, and making but a limited number of experiments, he required them to be 

 exact and striking, and to be presented at the precise moment. The slightest 

 inadvertence or misapprehension on the part of his assistants drew upon them 

 sharp reproofs, and they must have had a hard time of it but for the prompt 

 return of good nature and the acknowledgments which followed. " In a lec- 

 ture-room," insisted Thenard, " it is the students alone who have a right to 

 be considered ; professor, assistants, laboratory, ought all to be sacrificed to 

 them.". Before an auditory which had witnessed one of his outbursts, he 

 soothe^l the not unreasonable susceptibility of him he had maltreated by saying, 

 "Fourcroy has often done the like to me ! It produces promptness of appre- 

 hension." 



It was this same promptness of apprehension which supplied Thenard with 

 one of those penetrating insights which open new horizons to science. The 

 discovery of oxygenated water is recounted by himself in the following terms : 

 " In 1818 I was delivering my first lecture on the salts at the Sorbonne : ' in 

 order that the metals should unite with acids, I was saying it is neces- 

 sary that they should be oxydized, and that they should be so only to a certain 

 point ; when the quantity of oxygen is too great, the oxide loses a part of its 

 afiinity.' As an example I was about to cite the deutoxide of barium, when 

 the thought suddenly crossed my mind that the experiment had not been 

 made. As soon as I re-entered the laboratory I called for oxygenated barytes ; 

 I diluted chlorhydric acid with ice, adding it in such a manner as to have a 

 liquid at zero. I hydrogenized the barytes and reduced it to the state of 

 paste. I then made the mixture ; when, to my great surprise, the barytes 



