280 KAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



leeches. Cuvier, De Blainville, and their successors 

 adhered to this arrangement, although its external 



contains in such large quantities. He was at Alexandria at the 

 period of the capitulation of the French army, and he was the first 

 to respond to the generous enthusiasm which, initiated by Geoffroy 

 Saint-Hilaire, enabled France to retain the fruits of her scientific 

 conquests when all else was lost. 



On his return to France, Savigny resumed his studies with 

 redoubled ardour. While he was preparing his part of the great 

 work on Egypt, he published in succession several memoirs on 

 entirely new subjects, and it was then, in the very prime of life 

 and with one of the noblest scientific careers open before him, that 

 his labours were suddenly arrested. In 1817 he experienced the 

 first symptoms of a singular malady, which partially disappeared 

 with rest, but which having been revived by a premature application 

 to study, changed the rest of his life into one prolonged scene of 

 suffering. On the first symtoms of a relapse, Savigny understood 

 the fate that awaited him. In a letter which he wrote to his fellow- 

 citizens to announce the gift which he had made to his native town 

 of Provins of his copy of the great work on Egypt, he himself 

 related in the most touching manner the torments which he suffered. 

 It would appear that the nerves of special sensation were morbidly 

 affected ; grotesque and often threatening visions rose before his 

 eyes; voices, sometimes harmonious and sometimes discordant, were 

 ever singing in his ears; and fetid odours seemed to be diffused 

 around him. 



If the unhappy Savigny retained his reason in this painful and 

 terrible condition, and if he were enabled to the latest moment of 

 his life to study and describe his sufferings, he owed this power in 

 a great measure to the generosity of a friend who gave him for his 

 residence a charming cottage near Versailles, and more especially 

 to one of those manifestations of disinterested devotion of which 

 women alone seem to be capable. For twenty-seven years Ma- 

 demoiselle Letellier de Sainte- Ville shared his prison. Placed by the 

 side of the wire screen, which closed the darkened chamber in 

 which Savigny suffered, she watched over him, read to him, and 

 kept him acquainted with the progress of science, and thus con- 

 nected him with that world to which he could never return. 



Although the active scientific career of Savigny was thus brought 



