218 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



Paccard had been mentioned. De Saussure acknowledged this 

 very inadequate withdrawal in the following note : 



' Geneva, 19th October 1786. I thank you a thousand times for 

 the fresh copies of your letter that you have sent me. The postscript 

 you have added will throw some balm on the wound the body of the 

 letter cannot fail to inflict on the Doctor, and if it is at my instigation 

 that you have written it, I am glad that I wrote to you, and thank you 

 for your compliance. The description of the Doctor's journey, what- 

 ever form it may take, will be read from one end of Europe to the 

 other, and I should have been sorry to have seen in it what must 

 have caused you pain. No doubt you would have replied, but you 

 would have suffered annoyance, and that is what I wished to avoid.' 



De Saussure, whose object obviously was to prevent an 

 unpleasant controversy, had, we learn, written at the same time 

 to Paccard. The latter subsequently dealt with the matter by 

 supplying material for a controversial note in the Journal de 

 Lausanne (obviously edited by some ill-informed hand before 

 publication), and subsequently procuring to be published in the 

 same journal duly witnessed affidavits signed by Balmat con- 

 tradicting the main statements in Bourrit's letter. 1 



With the full facts now disclosed, it is, I fear, beyond doubt that, 

 in the words of de Saussure 's grandson, M. Henri de Saussure, 

 Bourrit was the prime author of the legend which was to be given 

 a world -wide circulation by Alexandre Dumas, the elder, on the 

 strength of an interview he had with Balmat over his bottle in a 

 Chamonix hotel forty-six years after the events described. 2 Up 

 to the present moment this legend has been the only account 

 known to exist purporting to be derived from the mouth of one 



1 See Journal de Lausanne, 24th February and 12th May 1787. In the earlier 

 note there is a blundering reference to Paccard's explorations under the Aiguille 

 du Gouter and a vague complaint that a rival has tried to obscure the Doctor's 

 exploit by disparaging as well as attempting to repeat it. Dr. Diibi suggests 

 de Saussure was here aimed at. But the relations between de Saussure and 

 Paccard at this moment, as related in de Saussure's diary, are inconsistent with 

 this explanation. Bourrit, who was at Sallanches on 13th August 1786, trying 

 to collect evidence to throw doubt on Paccard's ascent, must be the rival rebuked. 

 The suggestion that Paccard induced Balmat to sign a blank piece of paper, 

 which he filled up afterwards, is sufficiently refuted by the fact that the two 

 witnesses to the document were both men of character and position in the valley, 

 who would have been most unlikely to lend themselves to a patent fraud. 



2 A few months after his conversation with Dumas, J. Balmat met with his 

 death while searching for gold on the slopes of Mont Ruan, above Sixt. The 

 curious circumstances are related by Sir A. Wills in The Eagle's Nest. 



