366 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



the old Genevese custom, the General Assembly was invited to 

 select half. 



At the end of January the esteem in which de Saussure was 

 held by his fellow-citizens was shown by his selection as one of 

 the delegates to receive General Kellermann, who came on behalf 

 of the French Republic to admonish the Genevese not to look 

 too much towards Switzerland for aid in their troubles. A 

 banquet in honour of the General was held on the day on which 

 the news of the execution of Louis the Sixteenth reached Geneva. 



In March de Saussure was put on a small Committee of eleven 

 charged to frame the articles of a new constitution, and in April 

 was further nominated one of three members of a Diplomatic 

 Committee. 



In the Constituent Assembly, which was now sitting, we find 

 de Saussure taking the Presidency, which was a frequently 

 shifting office, for a short term. His family, his wife writes, 

 liked him better in his professor's robes than in his presi- 

 dential garment. In the Assembly he had as a colleague his old 

 acquaintance and companion, Bourrit, the cathedral Precentor. 

 Born a Natif , and never admitted into the society of the Upper 

 Town, 'notre Bourrit,' as his townsfolk called him, now found 

 himself exalted to a share in public life. His two sons, whose 

 Alpine performances we have recorded, had both become pastors 

 and popular preachers. It is to Bourrit's credit that in the 

 present crisis his lifelong connection with the Church proved 

 stronger than his political associations. He stood up manfully 

 for the clergy when it was proposed to exclude them from any 

 part in the control of popular education. Nor was this the only 

 occasion on which he showed the courage of his convictions. Of 

 another debate in the Assembly we have a satirical report from 

 Desonnaz, one of the more violent of the demagogues : 



' Nothing could be more entertaining than the sitting of the 

 National Assembly to-day. The subject was the renaming of the 

 churches. A citizen proposed, reasonably enough, names connected 

 with some event, or some particular connection, for each of these 

 houses of God. What greatly amused me was to hear a philosopher 

 (de Saussure) praising the Saints, while a simple artisan (Fol) de- 

 nounced them. The former maintained that to dedicate a church to 

 Reason was to personify an ideal metaphysical abstraction. Fol 



