128 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



of M. Bonnet. I dined with him and some other Professors of Pavia ; 

 they all three or four board together. They were very intimate between 

 themselves, and see little of the Pavians, because they are all foreigners. 

 They have succeeded some Pavia Professors who were donkeys ; the 

 Emperor dismissed them and appointed the present ones, who are, 

 accordingly, not looked on with too kind eyes at Pavia. One of the 

 Professors, M. Moscati, has an electrical machine, not a very powerful 

 one ; he showed me a curious experiment I shall repeat at Geneva. 

 But the best thing Moscati has is a very young and very pretty wife, 

 who had dined in town but came in in the evening. She could not 

 speak French, but I understood her Italian and succeeded in making 

 her understand mine. I addressed to her some gallant speeches, 

 which she took in very good part, but her presence did not prevent 

 us from making experiments with scorpions and salamanders and glow- 

 worms. Her husband, however, complained all the time that she 

 had no taste for such things, and would not attempt to learn about 

 them. I thought to myself I was a far more fortunate husband ! 



' I amused and at the same time instructed myself. Raspberry 

 syrup was served in place of supper, and at half -past eleven I took 

 leave of this agreeable company, heaped with tokens of friendship, 

 laden with books and a thousand little presents which they bestowed 

 on me ; and neither the science and the wit of the Professors nor the 

 beautiful eyes and soft Italian speeches of Madame Moscati could 

 make me promise to put off my departure for a single day ! ' 



It will be noted here, and it holds good of his letters and 

 diaries as a whole, that de Sauseure seldom refers to art or archi- 

 tecture. In England, York Cathedral is the only building he 

 mentions ; at Milan he passes unnoticed the Duomo, at Pavia the 

 Certosa, at Venice St. Mark's, only at Rome do antiquities attract 

 his notice, and even there the attraction was mainly historical. 

 Next to nature, his interest lay in human beings, and letters such 

 as the one translated above show that he understood and appre- 

 ciated them. If de Saussure was, as he says, a fortunate husband, 

 Madame de Saussure was a still more fortunate wife, despite such 

 passing infidelities as were caused by the glaciers of Savoy. 



From Milan de Saussure returned to Geneva by Novara, 

 Vercelli, Aosta, and the Great St. Bernard. 



De Saussure 's diary refers to a serious indisposition on the 

 Great St. Bernard from which he suffered on his return from this 

 trip. It may be remembered that Senebier, his biographer, asserts 



