The Abbe Hauey, the founder of crystallography, had been, the year previous, rescued from prison by young Geoffroy 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 hearing of his wife's death, he thrust his sword-cane through his heart.
Madame Roland had been beheaded, 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.[32] Still, however, amid the loud alarums of this social tempest, the Museum underwent a new birth which proved not to be untimely.

The Minister of the Interior (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 executive council, "under the supervision of which the National Museum is for the future placed;" though in general the assembly only reported to the Minister matters relating to the expenses, the first annual grant of the Museum being 100,000 livres.
Four days after, June 14th, the assembly met and adopted the name of the establishment in the following terms: _Museum d'Histoire Naturelle decrete par la Convention Nationale le 10 Juin, 1793_; and at a meeting held on the 9th of July the assembly definitely organized the first bureau, with Daubenton as director, Thouin treasurer, and Desfontaines secretary.

Lamarck, as the records show, was present at all these meetings, and at the first one, June 14th, Lamarck and Fourcroy were designated as commissioners for the formation of the Museum library.
All this was done without the aid or presence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the Intendant.

The Minister of the Interior, meanwhile, had communicated to him the decision of the National Convention, and invited him to continue his duties up to the moment when the new organization should be established.