To the letter of Mr. James Nicol was joined the account of Jacquemont's illness by Dr. MacLennan, the length of which we greatly regret prevents us from reproducing here;[2] it proves to what a point the excellent doctor had risked his own health, as the dying man had said. Nor were these the only tokens of sympathy which the family of their famous dead received. MM. Cordier, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and de Jussieu wrote the following letter to M. Jacquemont, the father:—
"PARIS, 21 May 1833
"SIR,—We have sympathised with the blow which has just struck you down too much not to feel a desire to associate ourselves with your grief, by bearing testimony to our own share in it. The administration of the Museum, which had entrusted your son with the mission he honourably fulfilled, and to which he has sacrificed his life, feels the cruel loss in a double capacity; it has lost in him a traveller in whom it placed complete reliance, and science has lost a naturalist of most brilliant promise.
"We are authorised to hope that, owing to the wise precautions he took during his last days, the fruits of the fatal journey will not be lost; that M. Victor Jacquemont's work will bear fruit and their results develop, though, doubtless, less brilliantly than as if under his own direction, yet in a sufficient manner to cause his efforts to be appreciated, both in actual accomplishment and as an example of what further work he would have done had he lived.
"You may rely upon it that nothing will be neglected on our part to attain to this end, and in order to give you the only real consolation which is left you.—We are, sir, etc.,
"Les professeurs administrateurs du Muséum"CORDIER, Director
GEOFFROY-SAINT-HILAIRE
A. DE JUSSIEU"
As a matter of fact, all Victor Jacquemont's writings reached Paris safe and sound. I saw them in M. Guizot's hand once when I had been to ask his help in saving the life of a man under sentence of death, who was to be shot the next day. I wanted a word from M. Guizot to this end, and he wrote on a spare sheet from among Jacquemont's manuscripts. The man was saved; but I will tell the story in its proper place. That is how the name of Jacquemont perhaps occupies a more important place in my memory and in my Memoirs than it should.
[1] The whole of Victor Jacquemont's writings, and the description of the principal objects of natural history which the collections comprised, that he sent to the Natural History Museum of Paris, have been published by MM. Firmin Didot frères, under the title of Voyage dans l'Inde, 6 vols, in 4to, four of printed matter and two containing 290 plates and 4 maps (1841-44).
[2] The letter will be found in the Paris edition of the Souvenirs of Dumas, 1855, vol. vii.
[CHAPTER IV]
George Sand