18 MEMOIR OF CUVIER. 



them. The closing scene of M. Cuvier's life, as a public 

 teacher, appears to me to be impressed with peculiar 

 beauty. Who could fail to be deeply affected at the last 

 accents of so pure an intelligence, disengaged from the 

 vanities and vexations of systems? Who could re- 

 main cold and insensible before the last look thrown on 

 creation, by him who had revealed so many of its myste- 

 ries ? After this lecture, the first symptoms of disease ap- 

 peared ; he felt a slight pain* and numbness in his right 

 arm, and his throat became affected. Two days after, 

 both his arms were seized, and the power of swallowing 

 was lost. He, nevertheless, retained all his faculties, 

 and the power of speech ; he arranged his worldly affairs, 

 by completing his will, and sent for M. Royer, to make a 

 note of the sums he had spent from his private funds, 

 in various outlays upon the collections in the garden. 

 These were attested by four witnesses, being too much 

 paralyzed to sign the deeds. He was perfectly calm and 

 resigned, much more so than those around him, and he 

 permitted his intimate friends to be with him to the very 

 last. " It was thus," writes Baron Pasquier, " that I was 

 a witness of his dying moments." Four hours before his 

 death, I was in that memorable cabinet where the 

 happiest hours of his life had been spent, and where I had 

 seen him surrounded with so much homage, enjoying his 

 well-merited success ; he caused himself to be carried 

 thither, and wished that his last breath should be drawn 

 there. His countenance was in a state of perfect repose, 

 and never did his noble head appear to me more beauti- 

 ful or worthy of admiration ; no alteration of a too sen- 

 sible or painful kind had yet taken place, only a little 

 weakness and difficulty in supporting himself being ob- 

 servable. I held the hand which he had extended to me, 

 while he said, in a voice scarcely articulate, " You see 

 what a difference there is between the man of Tuesday and 



