578 Life of Count Rumford. 



Robespierre made short shrift with those who were pro- 

 nounced guilty of having drawn large profits from the 

 old government. Madame Lavoisier's husband and 

 father, with one hundred and twenty-two others of the 

 condemned before the revolutionary tribunal, perished 

 under the guillotine, on the same scaffold, May 8, 

 1794. The charge against Lavoisier was that he had 

 adulterated tobacco, one of the articles the revenue of 

 which he farmed, with water and harmful ingredients. 

 After being sentenced, he asked for a few days' respite, 

 that he might be informed of the results of some of the 

 experiments which he had instituted, and which were in 

 progress during his confinement. Coffinhal, the coarse 

 jester of the tribunal, cried out, " The republic has no 

 need of philosophers." 



These direful times and events dashed all the happy 

 circumstances of the life and home of Madame Lavoi- 

 sier. She herself narrowly escaped violence by hiding 

 in obscurity. Her husband had devised to her all his 

 fortune, as she was childless, and it was saved from 

 wreck by the fidelity of a servant who managed to 

 secure it by a letter of credit on London, through M. 

 de Marbois. Under the Directory she resumed her 

 place in society, and when order and tranquillity suc- 

 ceeded to the horrors of the proscription she drew 

 around her, besides the surviving friends of her hus- 

 band and father, another circle of the disciples and suc- 

 cessors of the old philosophers, including Lagrange, 

 Laplace, Berthollet, Cuvier, Prony, Humboldt, and 

 Arago. Her attractive home at the Arsenal was a 

 place where all distinguished persons were entertained 

 with grace and amenity. She collected, edited, and 

 published, with an Introduction every way appropriate, 



