THE LAST YEARS 386 



been recommended to offer with regard to his liability having 

 been rejected, he should find himself compelled to suspend 

 payments that is, to acknowledge bankruptcy. 1 



Throughout that year (1795) de Saussure was still looking 

 anxiously for some scientific employment either abroad or in 

 France. He consulted with his daughter as to Gottingen, suggest- 

 ing that she and her husband should accompany him there, as he 

 could ill endure the parting with his beloved family. He also 

 wrote a letter of remonstrance to St. Petersburg complaining that 

 the proposal put before him through his friend Tingry had not 

 been followed by the definite offer promised. Meantime an 

 invitation came from across the Atlantic. Jefferson was at the 

 time looking for a Faculty to occupy the quaintly Georgian halls 

 and colonnades of his new University at Charlotte ville, Virginia . 

 He wrote to Washington from his home at Montecello suggesting 

 that some of the professors of the Genevese Academy might be 

 glad to find a refuge and employment in the States, and among 

 the names he put forward were those of de Saussure and of his 

 friends Pictet and Senebier. The offer was made and repeated in 

 a definite form through d'lvernois in the same autumn, but 

 nothing came of it. 2 



In his negotiation with Paris, the new French Resident 

 Desportes, the builder of the Temple at the Montenvers, a man 

 of some cultivation, whose frequent and friendly relations with 

 an aristocrat became matter of suspicion to the Genevese 

 Terrorists, was very helpful. De Saussure 's Journal shows that 

 frequent visits were exchanged between Desportes and de 

 Saussure. A letter from the latter to Desportes thanking him 



1 For the purposes of this tax or rather levy on capital the citizens were 

 divided into three classes Aristocrats, Engines, and Patriots. Aristocrats had 

 to pay most, 5 per cent, on the first 12,000 livres and 5' 12 extra on every thousand 

 livres in excess of 12,000. The total tax was not to exceed 90 per cent. De 

 Saussure's liability amounted to 25,652 florins. 



2 Sparks' Correspondence of Washington, vol. ii. (Boston, 1839) : ' The colleges 

 of Geneva and Edinburgh were considered as the two eyes of Europe in 

 matters of science insomuch that no other pretended to any rivalry with either. 

 Edinburgh has been the most famous in medicine since the time of Cullen, but 

 Geneva most so for other branches of science, and much the most resorted to 

 from the Continent of Europe because the French language is that used. 

 M. d'lvernois of Geneva, and a man of science known as the author of a history 

 of the Republic, has proposed the transplanting of that college as a body to 

 America.' 



2B 



