48 MEMOIR OF LATREILLE. 
would, 1 am certain, be more satisfying to his heart 
than all those called forth by his genius or talent. 
" Deprived by the j&rst of our revolutions of the 
support of a noble and powerful family, whose pro- 
tection he had acquired, and on which he had ome 
claims by birth, Latreille was thrown alone into the 
world, in the midst of political tempests, without 
property or means of any kind, with a well finished 
education, an ardent passion for study, a quick and 
sensitive heart, and a delicate frame of body. 
" Having escaped the proscription (who is there 
who has reached our times, after passing through 
these dreadful periods, without escaping the pro- 
scription oftener than once !) he was called, in a 
more favourable era to the Museum of Natural His- 
tory to arrange the insects contained in that institu- 
tion. He there found the means of perfecting himself 
in this branch of his studies, which he had always 
preferred to every other. In a short time he be- 
came in this department the competitor, then the 
rival, and finally the superior (not unquestioned 
although the fact was so undisputable) of those 
whom he called his masters. 
" He must needs obtain books. Many had al- 
ready been published in Germany on the science in 
which he excelled : the library of the Museum, now 
so rich, was then very poor, possessing very few on 
insects, and no additional ones were purchased. 
Latreille, whose slender appointments scarcely suf- 
ficed for his most urgent wants, wrought for the 
booksellers in order to procure for himself what was 
