POLITICS AND HOME LIFE (1781-92) 345 



victims who fell under de Saussure's cudgel. He had remarked 

 veins of quartz traversed by threads of green amianthe. De 

 Saussure's comment is, ' He calls it a transition between amianthe 

 and quartz ; he might as well say that a goose on the spit was a 

 transition between the goose and the spit.' On a further occasion 

 the Count is told that ' he obviously considers the limit of his own 

 understanding to be that of the possible, and that what he cannot 

 comprehend nature cannot perform.' 



Later in the year (1785) de Saussure's only daughter, Albertine, 

 married Jacques Necker, a nephew of the financier. Madame 

 Necker, whose acquaintance the de Saussures had made in Paris, 

 thus became a near connection of the family. 1 



In January 1786 de Saussure found himself obliged to resign 

 on the ground of ill-health the professorship which he had held for 

 twenty-four years. Some of his biographers, confronted with the 

 fact that in the preceding summer he had attacked Mont Blanc, 

 and that the next four years are the period of his greatest moun- 

 taineering activity, have not unnaturally suggested that health 

 was more or less of a pretext. The records before us, however, 

 show that the plea was a true one. 



In the previous December he had been forced by throat 

 trouble, following on a severe attack of whooping-cough, to apply 

 for temporary leave to break off his lectures. He now represented 



1 She wrote to de Saussure in June 1786 to describe a visit from Archdeacon 

 Coxe, who had consulted her about getting a fresh translator for his book in the 

 place of M. Ramond, of Pyrenean fame. Coxe thought Ramond too prone to 

 enthusiasm and exaggeration. Madame Necker's comment was very much to the 

 point : 



' It is to these faults in his translator that M. Coxe owes in part his success 

 at Paris, for we are still far from that love of nature which recognises perfec- 

 tion in just proportions, in the correspondence of its effects with our taste 

 rather than in the astonishment that they cause us.' 



Madame Necker's opinion was fully endorsed by the editor of EbeVs Guide, 

 who wrote : ' This work has gained much in the translation, and the notes and 

 additions with which M. Ramond has enriched it amount to 223 pages, and 

 are in many respects more interesting than the original work.' 



Madame Necker added : 



' I only got the letter of introduction you gave Mr. Coxe after he had left ; 

 he never spoke of it the trait is quaintly English. I received him on his 

 reputation as a person of distinction ; on your letter I should have welcomed 

 him as an old friend. I reproach myself for all the marks of attention I did 

 not pay to him, and I cannot forgive him.' 



The solid, self-satisfied Archdeacon evidently considered that he stood in no 

 need of any introduction. 



