YOUTH AND EARLY TRAVELS 83 



this period he had Mont Blanc very much on the brain. Here 

 is his confession in his own words : 



' It became for me a sort of illness. My eyes could not encounter 

 this mountain, which one sees from so many spots in our neighbourhood, 

 without my being seized with a pang.' [Voyages, 2023.] 



But if de Saussure was not to be diverted from the objects he had 

 set before him, the survival of many of his letters of a later date 

 enables us to appreciate with what tenderness he strove to soothe 

 his wife's feelings. He writes : 



' I should be in despair if I thought that you did not love me too 

 much to look on my travels with indifference. Your affection makes, 

 I must confess, the whole happiness of my life. I could wish I 

 swear to you to make to it a complete sacrifice, but how can I re- 

 nounce a vocation which absorbs me, and thus abandon my career 

 in the middle ? I assure you that I have done all that is humanly 

 in my power to shorten my journey without spoiling it. For there 

 would be no lack of people to say, " Why did not he see that ? " " Why 

 did not he do this ? " And how could I venture to reply to my 

 critics, " It was in order sooner to rejoin my wife" ? ' 



Again he replies to some badinage on her part : 



' I assure you I do not trouble myself much about mes belles. 

 You, my children, my parents, are about the only objects that distract 

 me from my philosophical contemplations. I include your sisters, to 

 whom I am most sincerely attached.' 



On a later occasion (in 1783), in reply to some protest on her 

 part, he urges the claims of science in a lighter vein : 



' In this Valle Leventina, which was new to me, I have made a 

 number of observations of the greatest importance to me and quite 

 beyond my hopes, but this is not what will interest you. You would 

 like better God pardon me to see me as fat as a canon, asleep all 

 day in the chimney corner after a good dinner, than to see me gain 

 immortal fame by the most sublime discoveries at the cost of a few 

 ounces of weight and several weeks of absence. If I make these 

 journeys despite the uneasiness they cause you, it is because I regard 

 it as an engagement of honour, that I feel myself bound to extend 

 my knowledge on the subjects in question, and, as far as it depends on 

 myself, to make my works perfect. I say to myself, "As an officer 

 goes to the assault when it is sounded, as a merchant goes to the Fair 



