164 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



French, and during the fight, the company, in which 

 was M. de Lamarck, was placed in a locaHty on 

 which the whole of the allied artillery was con- 

 centrated, and it was forgotten to be moved during 

 the confusion of the retreat. All the officers and 

 sub-officers were killed, and only sixteen men re- 

 mained, when the oldest grenadier, seeing that they 

 were left behind by their army, proposed to the 

 young volunteer that they should retreat. Lamarck 

 said, " They have posted us here, and we ought not 

 to move until we are relieved," and insisted on re- 

 maining. By-and-by the colonel, missing the com- 

 pany, sent them an order to retreat by safe ways, 

 and under the shelter of what they could get. This 

 act of great courage was told to the Marshal de 

 Broglie, and he made Lamarck an officer on the 

 spot. Then he was made lieutenant. But such a 

 brilliant commencement was not to have a military 

 termination, and a miserable accident gave a new 

 direction to his life. When Lamarck, after the 

 war, was in garrison at Monaco, one of his fellow- 

 officers lifted him up by the head, and the result 

 was to injure his neck. He nearly died from the 

 effects of this folly, and was saved by a distinguished 

 surgeon at Paris, M. Tenon, whose operation left 

 Lamarck with life, and a fearfully scarred neck, and 

 unable to follow his profession. The treatment 

 occupied a whole year, and he was so poor, that 

 one of his biographers states, rather cruelly, that his 

 necessary solitude gave him plenty of time for medi- 

 tation. It is remarkable that although I^amarck 



