Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/49

Rh of students, and thus gave origin to a title which has become famous in connection with his name. He said, "Let the expression of the sympathy you offer be given, not to the man of science, but to one who might call himself the Dean of the Students of France, since it has been given to him to continue without interruption, on the banks of the Seine, studies which were begun at the end of the last century in the beautiful land of Anjou."

M.Chevreul has a considerable library at the museum, which has been regularly increased by the accession of valuable books which his son, a bibliophilist like himself, has helped him to find. His grand life has been engaged in thought, and concentrated upon the studies from which such useful discoveries have resulted. He has kept himself in good condition and happy by work and moderation. His wife, who has now been dead for more than twenty years, attended to his comforts with all the devotion which such superior minds are able to invoke. His only son, a retired magistrate, lives at Dijon. The illustrious old man lives, therefore, alone, with his books for companions, by the aid of which he is able to converse with his brethren, the great ones of mankind, the Newtons and the Galileos. When not among his books, he is at his laboratory in the Gobelins, where he goes on with his experiments with a dexterity still quite juvenile,

M.Chevreul possesses a large fortune, which is augmented from year to year by the rewards of his scientific labors. His life therefore passes along placidly, enlivened by the pleasure of seeing the closing years of his career emphasized by ovations to his merit. He has witnessed the birth of all the scientific discoveries of our century, and has beheld the marvelous spectacle of the development of modern industry.

M.Chevreul is tall, and bears to this day an erect body. Of elegant manners and incomparable affability, he rarely fails to receive you with a smile. His head is a very fine one, with a broad and massive forehead, shaded with white locks. He is a man of wit as well as of genius. Recently, when engaging a new preparator for his laboratory, he said to him: "You must have a good deal of courage to take this place; I have killed four preparators already." We recollect, says M.Tissandier, seeing him at a ball in the Élysée, at midnight of a winter night, fresh and lively, surrounded by ladies whom he was gayly entertaining, with an exquisite and charming grace.

M.Chevreul is very sober. He drinks nothing but water and beer, except that, by the special request of Minister Goblet, he for the first time in his life departed from his abstinence to drink a glass of champagne in response to the sentiment "Vive la France!" at his century-banquet; and to his temperance, with his robust constitution and his prudent, regular, and industrious life, he doubtless owes his survival to 80 high an age.

It is a grand and beautiful spectacle, M.Tissandier concludes, that