THE LAST YEARS 373 



In a letter of 18th March 1794 we get the first definite warning 

 of the greater misfortune of which Dr. Odier described the first 

 symptoms. Madame de Saussure writes to her son : 



' Your poor father I say your poor father, for he has given me a 

 great fright at the Assembly ten days ago had a seizure which de- 

 prived him of any sense of touch in his arms and fingers, but not of 

 the power of movement. A plaster has lessened, but not yet cured, 

 his stiffness. He calls himself, in joke, the Paralytic ! But I cannot 

 play with this suggestion ; it makes me tremble, though I have long 

 foreseen it. Our paralyses do not attack the heart ; you will see.' 



From this time forward de Saussure was not only a ruined 

 man constantly engaged in anxious inquiries for some honourable 

 post which would supply an adequate income, but also an invalid 

 driven from time to time to have recourse to Baths in the hope of 

 restoring his health. His position in these respects may recall 

 the last days of Sir Walter Scott. He showed an at least equal 

 courage and energy in the protracted struggle of the following five 

 years. 



We next hear of him congratulating it must have been 

 satirically the renegade priest Soulavie, who was the French 

 Resident at Geneva, on the recognition by Robespierre of the 

 existence of a Deity shown in the Fete de 1'Etre Supreme held at 

 Paris, and receiving the reply : ' Robespierre mocks at le bon Dieu 

 as much as I do.' 



The troubles of all sorts in which he was now involved pro- 

 duced in de Saussure, never too patient towards scientific dabblers 

 and impostors, a marked increase of irritability. An unfortunate 

 ' Citoyen Boissel ' had floated down the part of the Rhone between 

 the Jura and Lyons and published a Voyage Pittoresque, to which 

 the French National Convention was pleased to accord an honour- 

 able mention. In the course of his narrative he attributed to de 

 Saussure a statement which drew forth this crushing reprimand : 



' I thank you, sir, a thousand times for sending me your Voyage 

 Pittoresque. 



' But I cannot thank you for the compliments contained in your 

 letter. I should have preferred that, in place of flattering me in 

 private, you had refrained from attributing to me in public an opinion 

 which I never held. You suggest that I believe that the Rhone 

 swallows light bodies thrown into it where it emerges [from the Perte 



