5/19 This volume was dictated to and written out by one of his daughters, Mlle. On her the aged savant leaned during the last ten years of his life--those years of failing strength and of blindness finally becoming total. The frail woman accompanied him in his hours of exercise, and when he was confined to his house she never left him. It is stated by Cuvier, in his eulogy, that at her first walk out of doors after the end came she was nearly overcome by the fresh air, to which she had become so unaccustomed. |