334 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



traces of the quarrels he had left behind. At 'Blair's Hospital/ 

 the hut erected on the Montenvers two years previously, some 

 Representants had been at the pains to efface the names of a party 

 of their political opponents. 



In Desportes' Temple de la Nature, which was erected in 1795, a 

 Visitors' Book, a ' Livre des Amis,' received the effusions of visitors, 

 but it is unlikely that the earlier hut was similarly provided. 

 A passage in one of the unpublished letters of Mr. Brand (1786) 

 serves, however, to explain the allusion. Our countryman refers 

 to the infinite number of names that were cut or written in the stone 

 walls or on the wooden roof of the building. Mr. Brand adds some 

 details as to Blair. He was a bon vivant who had been compelled 

 to leave his home in Dorsetshire and live abroad ' by the costs 

 of his cellar and hunting,' and wanted some place to lunch com- 

 fortably in when he visited the Montenvers. His ' Chateau ' or 

 ' Hospital,' as the guides mockingly called it, was but a rude 

 affair. A few years later, in 1795, Desportes entrusted Bourrit 

 with two thousand francs to erect its successor, the Temple de la 

 Nature, which was decorated with the names of Genevese and 

 foreign savants, and had some furniture and a looking-glass 

 besides its ' Livre des Amis.' The furniture was a few years 

 later wrecked and the Visitors' Book disappeared, but a new one 

 was provided in 1810, which contained an entry made in 1812 

 by the Empress Josephine. 



For a year the Councils persisted in their uncompromising 

 attitude. The result was the popular revolution of April 1782. 

 There was some street fighting and bloodshed. The Repre- 

 sentants and the populace, once more reunited and masters of 

 the situation, demanded the total abolition of the Senate and 

 Great Council. They took steps for the defence of the city from 

 external attack. They appointed a small executive committee, 

 named the Constitutional, to deal with the political crisis. De 

 Saussure, who had so far succeeded in keeping out of any active 

 share in politics, was one of the members of the patrician party 

 who hurried to the Town Hall on the news that it had been 

 seized by the mob, and he acted as the spokesman of his colleagues 

 in refusing to sit as Magistrates at its bidding. He consequently 

 became one of a small group of patricians who were held as host- 

 ages and confined for forty -eight hours at the Hotel des Balances. 



