100 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



sister-in-law, shortly after his arrival in the Dutch capital, de 

 Saussure summarises his first impressions of Holland and gives a 

 pleasant picture of the relations of the gay young party, of which 

 he, the eldest, was twenty -eight, that had just broken up : 



' Here we are, my dear Minette, since Thursday evening, the 23rd 

 of this month, in the great and famous city of Amsterdam. Your 

 sister seems to accommodate herself to it very well, and, if it were not 

 for the regret we both feel at being separated from you three, I believe 

 we should manage to amuse ourselves. It is quite another thing to 

 Paris ; at Paris the beauty and the splendour is inside the houses, 

 here it is outside. The city of Amsterdam and all Holland are beautiful 

 beyond all anticipation and the most exaggerated ideas one could form 

 of them ; but it is all a spectacle for the eyes. Enter the houses, and 

 your eyes will still be satisfied by the pictures, the carpets, and the 

 porcelain, but you will find no gaiety, no amusements, no Comidie 

 Franfaise, hardly any conversation except about business. One must 

 pass through Amsterdam and stay in Paris. 



' Good-bye, my dear and good sister, love me as I love you I can- 

 not ask you for more. Give a thousand messages from me to Madame 

 Turrettini. Despite our little skirmishes, I love her with all my heart ; 

 she has a witchery which makes all the world feel an irresistible tender- 

 ness for her ; this malady seized me on our first acquaintance, and I 

 do not expect ever to get over it. My greetings to our good brother 

 Turrettini. I long eagerly for us all to meet again, but I fear that we 

 shall never be so closely united as we were at Paris. Amuse yourself 

 as well as you can, and above all think often of the best friend you 

 have in the world.' 



Minette followed faithfully one of her brother-in-law's injunc- 

 tions. When the de Saussures returned to Geneva six months 

 later, they found her married. Her wedded life was brief, and 

 ended tragically in the suicide of her husband and the early deaths 

 of both her children. But to the end of his life her affectionate 

 relations with her brother-in-law remained unbroken. His letters 

 home on his travels constantly contain messages to her and regrets 

 that she is not at hand to discuss politics with him in his solitary 

 inn. Madame de Saussure 's interests, one gathers, were of a 

 more domestic order. 



Few of Madame Tronchin's letters have been preserved. But 

 I have two before me written eighteen years later when she was 

 spending the summer in the fashionable company of Spa. She 



