186 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



1 If Bonaparte had consulted M. Bourrit, he would have pointed 

 out to him a route through the Alps shorter, more convenient, and 

 easier than any of those by which he transported the different divisions 

 of his army ! 



' As we left we saw again the bed on the frame, and my companion 

 whispered to me that M. Bourrit had some resemblance to Diogenes. 

 On looking at him I saw that his sleeve had a hole in it.' 



The Bishop of Annecy granted, at Bourrit's request, a dis- 

 pensation from fasting to the visitors to Chamonix. An extract 

 from his eloquent appeal to the Bishop may serve to show his 

 special regard for our countrymen : 



' Curiosity brings to them [the Chamoniards] strangers, men of 

 distinction, above all, Englishmen, who come to admire the spot 

 where Nature reveals her grandeur in its beautiful and its terrible 

 aspects : they arrive tired, exhausted ; they are told of the obligation 

 to fast they soon feel no obligation but that to leave, to get away. 

 The inhabitants appeal in this matter to your indulgence, your kindness ; 

 they do not ask to be themselves dispensed from fasting, but they 

 beg you to permit them to feed visitors according to their wishes, 

 and as the fatigues they have undergone and those they still endure in 

 travelling among these mountains demand.' 



It was no doubt a small fly in the ointment that Bourrit's 

 fellow-citizens failed to show proper respect for ' notre Bourrit,' 

 that the Genevese literary public smiled at the pretensions of the 

 worthy Precentor, and that the local men of science refused to take 

 his romantic rhapsodies at his own valuation. 



Bourrit himself was at no pains to conceal his character : 

 his books and letters are self -revelations. His style is a parody 

 of that of the day, alternately familiar, sentimental, and high- 

 flown. At one moment he is pouring out lengthy confidences 

 about the marvellous intelligence of his dog, Raton ; the next 

 he is celebrating the charms of the rustic beauties of the Bernese 

 Oberland, or in incoherent ecstasies over the belles horreurs of 

 the mountains, or descanting on the fearful dangers he believes 

 himself to have escaped. His feats, and the perils they lead 

 him into, appear in his eyes prodigiously magnified. His per- 

 petual state of emotion deprives him of any power of accurate 

 observation. As the English translators of his Journey to the 

 Glaciers of Savoy naively remark : ' In all his descriptions he 



