82 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



Alphonse Turrettini, a member of an old family of Italian origin. 

 De Saussure, by all accounts the most amiable of men in private 

 life, entered warmly into the larger family circle now open to him. 

 In the words of the sentimental Senebier, ' His expansive heart was 

 not too narrow for the new relations which his marriage provided 

 him ; he cherished with tenderness the amiable sisters of his wife, 

 who like her united bodily graces to the charms of the mind, 

 education, and true virtue.' The relatively early deaths of his 

 two brothers-in-law, combined with the fact that the country-house 

 at Genthod remained the joint property and summer residence of 

 the three sisters, led to the continuance of a singularly intimate 

 and affectionate relationship of which we shall come across fre- 

 quent indications in de Saussure 's correspondence. 



At this point de Saussure 's biographer interpolates an anecdote 

 suited to the sentiment of the day in order to illustrate his hero's 

 kindness of heart. A few days after the wedding, news came 

 to Geneva that his foster-brother had been arrested as a deserter 

 at La Roche sur Foron in Faucigny, and was in danger of being 

 shot ; de Saussure at once rushed off to the spot and was successful 

 in obtaining a commutation of the sentence. On this Senebier 

 exclaims : ' A quoi serviraient le genie et le savoir s'ils fletrissaient 

 la sensibilite ? H est plus utile qu'on ne croit de peindre le cceur 

 d'un observateur avant de raconter ses travaux.' The 'sensi- 

 bility ' of the biographer is somewhat of a trial to the modern 

 reader, and would not, I fancy, have been congenial to his 

 subject ! 



His marriage put de Saussure and his bride to a test in most 

 cases incidental to that relationship in life in an unusually severe 

 form. It was an anxious matter to marry a youth who had 

 already avowed a passion for mountains, and a special devotion to 

 the inaccessible Monts Maudits, who had even gone further, and 

 plotted ways and means for conquering their snows. This am- 

 bition of de Saussure was, we are told by contemporaries, for years 

 a constant source of uneasiness to his family. His wife in 

 particular seems to have shown from the first, and never to have 

 wholly overcome, a very natural anxiety. But his resolutions 

 once formed were not easily set aside. He made up his mind, 

 he tells us, to make every year an Alpine tour, and he did his 

 best, while his health permitted, to carry out this intention. At 



