Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/51

Rh reside in France and draw his Bavarian and his English pensions, during the turbulent times of the empire. His reception in Paris delighted him. Parties were given him daily. The new elector of Bavaria wished to make him minister of state, but Rumford preferred to remain in Paris where were centered all that charmed him. His name was known everywhere, and the elector wrote him congratulating him on the cordiality extended to him by the French.

He soon married Madame Lavoisier, widow of the illustrious chemist who had perished, under the guillotine, a victim of the cruel Robespierre. They lived in rue d'Anjou, in the finest part of Paris. The salon of Madame Rumford was the last of the eighteenth century. Lagrange, Laplace, Guizot, Cuvier and Arago were frequent visitors. But the union of Count and Madame Rumford proved unhappy. Their characters and temperaments were incompatible, and after some domestic agitation a separation took place.

Rumford now leased a charming villa at Auteuil, which had been the abode of the celebrated Madame Helvetius, who had made it one of the chief literary centers of Paris, where our own Franklin was a favored guest. Two acres of gardens surrounded the house. It is said that Napoleon, when at St. Helena, recalled a remark made to