Life of Count Rumford. 577 



ler-general. From her earliest years she enjoyed at her 

 father's house the society of eminent and cultivated 

 men who were devoted to the highest studies and to 

 reformatory enterprises. There she listened to Turgot, 

 Malesherbes, Trudaine, Condorcet, Dupont de Ne- 

 mours, and the Abbe Raynal. Her uncle, the Abbe 

 Terrai, wished her to form a marriage at court; but 

 her father, a man of high distinction in science and 

 affairs of state, and possessed of great wealth, preferred 

 one of his own colleagues in the revenue service, Mon- 

 sieur Lavoisier. To him she was married on Decem- 

 ber 1 6, 1771, being then not quite fourteen years of 

 age. Having appreciated and improved upon the bril- 

 liant advantages which she had enjoyed at her father's 

 house in the society of wits and savans, and receiving a 

 large fortune, she took to her new home for her hus- 

 band, with youth, beauty, and all accomplishments, a 

 passionate interest in his own studies and scientific pur- 

 suits. She became his companion, pupil, and assistant, 

 living in his laboratory, aiding in his experiments, writ- 

 ing at his dictation, and translating and drawing for 

 him. She made with her own hand the beautiful illus- 

 trations of his Treatise on Chemistry, and translated, 

 at his request, Kirwan's work on Phlogiston and the 

 Constitution of Acids. (Paris, 1787.) 



Though her husband's principles were in favor of 

 reform, he had at the very outbreak of the Revolution 

 contemplated the future with dismay, and had refused 

 the invitation of the King to become one of his minis- 

 ters. The class to which he and his father-in-law be- 

 longed, as speculators in the revenues, constituted the 

 most conspicuous and odious of the victims of the san- 

 guinary passions which were about to have their riot. 

 37 



