106 MEMOIE OF MAGENDIE, 



ttere of great utility ; there, as everywhere else, he commanded general esteem, 

 and more than elsewhere showed himself accessible to friendship. He had 

 eight years before been called by the ministry of war to the presidency of the 

 commission of hippiatric hygiene. Here the information which he conveyed 

 became the source of ameliorations of which our cavalry still enjoys the benefit. 

 In 1851 the cross of commander of the legion of honor was sent to him; at 

 this, however, he took umbrage, fearing that the services which he had rendered 

 would thus lose the merit of disinterestedness. 



A grave alteration which manifested itself in the health of M. Magendie 

 revealed that one of the organs essential to life was attacked. Thenceforth he 

 came but rarely to our meetings ; thenceforth there survived for us, in place of 

 the capricious and difficult colleague, only the man of uncontested eminence. 

 Nothing was remembered but that undeviating rectitude which gave so much 

 strength to the personal attachments of which he was the object ; and when, 

 still later, it was known that the malady had become more serious, devoted dis- 

 ciples, grateful pupils, relations, friends, colleagues felt a common alarm ; asperi- 

 ties were forgotten. It was said by Fontenelle of an academician of his time : 

 " Those who might have had something to complain of in regard to his blunt- 

 ness, all went to see him ; he was touched by the expression of sentiments which 

 he had merited more than he had attracted." M. Magendie also received with 

 cordiality and acknowledgment the expression of the sentiments he had merited. 

 " Know," said he to his old competitors, " that my asperity increased in pro- 

 portion to the worth which I recognized in those towards whorti I exercised it." 

 So ingenious is self-love that each found in this strange mode of appreciation 

 wherewith to be satisfied. 



It was impossible to enter the room of the invalid without being struck with 

 the grief which impressed the countenance of a servant whom thirty years* con- 

 tact had rendered the grotesque but faithful copy of his master. Watching 

 anxiously by his pillow this attendant heard him announce, with calmness, the 

 hour of separation. " Courage, my good master," he exclaimed, carried away 

 by a pious attachment, " courage, I beseech you ; we shall still grumble on 

 together." 



The moral force which this upright man had so studiously cultivated was 

 respected by the malady. His sufferings did not distract him ; he studied them 

 as phenomena. "You see me here completing my experiments," were his 

 parting words to a colleague ; " never has the science to which I have devoted 

 all my strength appeared to me environed with more grandeur ; the springs of 

 life, so marvellously combined, are quickened in order to make of each of us an 

 instrument of passage, which in perishing is regenerated. In my restricted 

 course may I but have succeeded in planting some way-marks along the route 

 which leads to Truth, the sole power to which I have subordinated my 

 reason !" 



M. Magendie died the 7th of October, 1855 



