Biographical Memoir ofM. Claude Louis Richard. 203 



He unhesitatingly and unvaryingly declared that he would be a 

 botanist ; that he would be a gardener at all hazards, and no- 

 thing else. Neither entreaties nor threats had any effect on 

 him ; and his father's anger rose to such a pitch, that he ba- 

 nished him from his house, allowing him only ten francs a-month 

 for his support. 



Young Richard was then not quite fourteen, and how many 

 children of that age would not such a treatment have led to the 

 most degrading irregularities, or perhaps to a miserable death ! 

 He, however, showed the courage and prudence of a grown 

 up person. He betook himself quietly to Paris, hired a cor- 

 ner of a garret, went through the town in search of an ar- 

 chitect, who gave him plans of gardens to copy, devoted 

 to this labour a part of his nights ; and after having thus se- 

 cured the means of subsistence, occupied himself through the 

 day in regularly attending the lectures in the College of France 

 and the King's Garden. But he did not confine himself to these 

 first precautions. The beauty of his drawings, and the punc- 

 tuality with which he fulfilled his engagements, obtained him a 

 great deal of work. By degrees he was entrusted to direct by 

 himself the execution of the plans which he had traced ; and 

 while he was thus gaining considerable profits, he established 

 so much order and economy in his manner of living, that, at the 

 end of a few years, not even asking of his father the miserable 

 aid that had been promised him, he not only supported himself 

 with decency, but had accumulated upwards of 80,000 livres. 



But his savings had the same object as his studies, and al- 

 ways referred to botany. Like most men captivated with a love 

 of nature, he wished to enlarge the sphere of his observations, 

 and to visit distant countries in quest of plants. It was for the 

 purpose of attaining this end, without the help of any one, that, 

 from the age of fifteen to that of eighteen, he lived in the midst 

 of Paris like an anchorite, giving himself no other relaxation 

 than mere change of labour. He was, in particular, constant 

 in his attendance on the lectures and botanical walks of Bernard 

 de Jussieu, the most modest, and perhaps the most profound 

 botanist of the eighteenth century, who, although he scarcely 

 pubhshed any thing, is, nevertheless, the inspiring genius of 



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