PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 



33 



crystallography, had been, the year previous, rescued 

 from prison by young GeofTroy St. Hilaire, his neck 

 being barely saved from the gleaming axe. Roland, 

 the friend of science and letters, had been so hunted 

 down that at Rouen, in a moment of despair, on hear- 

 ing of his wife's death, he thrust his sword-cane 

 through his heart. Madame Roland had been be- 

 headed, as also a cousin of her husband, and we can 

 well imagine that these fateful summer and autumn 

 days were scarcely favorable to scientific enterprises.* 

 Still, however, amid the loud alarums of this social 

 tempest, the Museum underwent a new birth which 

 proved n^fcto be untimely. The Minister of the In- 

 terior (Garat) invited the professors of the Museum 

 to constitute an assembly to nominate a director and 

 a treasurer, and he begged them to present extracts 

 of their deliberations for him to send to the execu- 

 tive council, " under the supervision of which the 



* Most men of science of the Revolution, like Monge and others, 

 were advanced republicans, and the Chevalier Lamarck, though of 

 noble birth, was perhaps not without sympathy with the ideas which 

 led to the establishment of the republic. It is possible that in his 

 walks and intercourse with Rousseau he may have been inspired with 

 the new notions of liberty and equality first promulgated by that 

 philosopher. • 



His studies and meditations were probably not interrupted by the 

 events of the Terror. Stevens, in his history of the French Revolu- 

 tion, tells us that Paris was never gayer than in the summer of 1793, 

 and that during the Reign of Terror the restaurants, cafis, and the- 

 atres were always full. There were never more theatres open at the 

 same period than then, though no single great play or opera was 

 produced. Meanwhile the great painter David at this time built up 

 a school of art and made that city a centre for art students. Indeed 

 the Revolution was "a grand time for enthusiastic young men," while 

 people in general lived their ordinary lives. There is little doubt, 

 then, that the savants, except the few who were occupied by their 

 duties as members of the Convention Nationale, worked away quietly 

 at their specialties, each in his own study or laboratory or lecture- 

 room. 



