372 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



to find some occupation which would give him an independent 

 income. To his father's suggestion that he might take a tutorship, 

 he replied that owing to the war the English were not travelling, 

 and that the bent of his studies scientific rather than classical 

 was little likely to recommend him to an English patron. 



About this time Madame de Saussure mentions a startling 

 visit : 



' At supper your father was asked for. The caller was brought 

 into the salon, and Tetu [the domestic who climbed Mont Blanc with 

 de Saussure] lit one of the candles on the mantelpiece, which gave 

 but a dim light. Your father left the joint, and saw before him a dark 

 man, who exclaimed, " I am Marat." At the first moment he was 

 tempted to think it was a ghost ! It was Marat's brother, of whom 

 we had never heard.' J 



It was towards the end of 1793, we learn from the report of 

 Dr. Odier already mentioned, that de Saussure's health, always 

 uncertain, for his digestive troubles had never been wholly over- 

 come, gave cause for serious anxiety. Dr. Odier's account 

 (greatly abbreviated) is as follows : 



' To de Saussure's long and painful efforts to arrest or direct the 

 torrent of our political revolutions were now added the anxieties caused 

 by the grievous inroads on a fortune already seriously reduced. Similar 

 losses befell most of our capitalists, but in his case the noble use he 

 had always made of his wealth gave him a better right than others 

 to view its loss with bitterness. These mental troubles reacted on his 

 health, and he was attacked by frequent fits of giddiness, followed by 

 a feeling of stiffness in the left arm and the left side of his face, which 

 no remedy could overcome.' 



In the following February (1794) de Saussure was invited to 

 stand for election as one of the four Syndics. 



' We might,' writes Madame de Saussure, ' have had the honour 

 of being wife and daughter of a Syndic. Your father yesterday declined 

 the prospect of this elevation, to the great content of the Syndic 

 Dentand, who assured him he did well, because his health would have 

 suffered. Your father retorted that it was because he thought he 

 would have obtained a large number of votes that he did not care 

 to take the risk. This conversation between the two candidates made 

 the hearers, who were far from agreeing with Dentand, laugh.' 



1 The Marata came from Neuchatel; but Marat's father, a doctor, had at 

 one time lived in Geneva. 



