384 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



Deny, 1 then travelling in Italy, to the Genevese bankers Delarue 

 at Genoa : 



' SIRS, Having read this morning in a foreign newspaper that 

 the famous M. de Saussure, the intimate friend of my brother, General 

 Harvey, era redotto alia, poverta, I beg you to write to him on my 

 behalf and offer him an annuity of fifty louis d'or. And should he 

 find it agreeable to pass the rest of his life as my guest he would receive 

 the same sum paid half-yearly, his board, etc. etc., and might travel 

 at my cost in a country the most rich in the world in natural history, 

 a virgin country, untouched by naturalists, Ireland.' 



De Saussure 's answer was as follows : 



' MY LORD, I have been moved to tears by the proof of interest 

 and esteem with which you have honoured me, when, on reading in 

 a newspaper that I was reduced to poverty, you at once ordered 

 your bankers to assure me an annual income of fifty louis. 



' Certainly, were I in actual want I should not blush to accept the 

 help of a man, my lord, who from love of those who devote their lives 

 to the study of science, and from attachment to an old friend of his 

 brother, desired to protect me from the pangs of extreme misery ; 

 but my situation is not yet of this kind. It is true, I have nothing 

 left, but my wife is able to supply the wants if not lavishly at least 

 adequately of myself and my family. So, my lord, I shall not take 

 advantage, at any rate for the present, of the generous offer you make 

 me of an annuity, an offer for which I shall none the less retain the 

 most lively and profound gratitude. As to the further proposal which 

 is equally the result of your kind consideration for me and your love 

 of science, that I should come and study at your home and with means 

 furnished by you the Natural History of Ireland, I should be ex- 

 tremely tempted were I not absolutely inseparable from my wife, 

 not because I live upon her fortune, but because I have for her an 

 attachment of thirty years founded on all the links which can be 

 formed by mind, virtue, and character. . . . Whatever lot Providence 

 has in store for me, your kindness, my lord, will remain engraved in 

 my heart to my last breath.' 



The Revolutionary Authorities were now taking steps to put 

 in force an elaborate scheme of taxation on the wealthier class of 

 citizens. On his return to Geneva de Saussure wrote a sharp 

 note to the tax-collector, pointing out that the arrangement he had 



1 See Dictionary of National Biography. 



