In 1896, feeling the advance of age, he determined to make a splendid present to the Academy of Sciences. The Duc d'Aumale had given Chantilly to the Institute. M. Antoine d'Abbadie gave the Academy of Sciences his magnificent Château d'Abbadie, near Hendaye, in the Basses-Pyrénées, on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. The academy will enter upon the possession of this property, of three hundred and ten hectares of land surrounding it, and of a capital producing a revenue of forty thousand francs (eight thousand dollars) after the death of Madame d'Abbadie. Only a single condition is imposed on the gift. Having carried on his astronomical work at Abbadia and begun there to catalogue the stars and study the variations of gravity, he asked in exchange for his incomparable gift that the academy should complete in fifty years a catalogue of five hundred thousand stars. The bureau of the academy dispatched its president, M. Cornu, and its perpetual secretary, M. Bertrand, to Abbadia as its representatives to express its gratitude to M. and Madame d'Abbadie. The faith of the academy was pledged to continue the work begun by M. d'Abbadie, and a commemorative medal was given him bearing on one side a portrait of Arago, and on the other a minute of the gift and the thanks of the company.
The Château of Abbadia will therefore be devoted to the determination of the stars that are not yet catalogued. Probably, as was the donor's thought, the religious orders or some of the secular priests will perform this colossal labor. The chaplain of the château has already given his service to the work. In any case, those who may live in the château will have no cause to complain of their home. Abbadia is a very interesting structure, built from plans by Viollet-le-Duc, modified and carried out by the architect Duthoit, with suggestions of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. The observatory adjoins the château, which it antedates thirty years in building, and has a meridian telescope and the essential astronomical instruments. In the deep cellar of the observatory M. d'Abbadie made more than two thousand seismic observations with the pendulum.
The château stands in an admirable situation, and presents a very fine external aspect. We give a general view of it and a picture of the main entrance. The interior decoration is very beautiful.
Fig. 2.—Principal Entrance to the Château d'Abbadie.
Those who have had the privilege of visiting Abbadia have remarked that a stone is missing from the balcony of one of the windows; this stone, according to the wishes of the donor, is never to be put in place. A history is connected with its absence. M. d'Abbadie, in the course of a journey in America, contracted a strong friendship with Prince Louis Napoleon, who was then in the United States. The prince once said to him, "If I ever come into power, whatever you may ask of me is granted in advance." The prince became Emperor of the French. Napoleon III had a good memory. He met his former companion one day, and said to him in an offhand way: "I promised when we were in America to give you whatever you would ask for; have you forgotten it?" M. d'Abbadie replied: "I have built myself a château near Hendaye, where I hope to spend the rest of my days. If you will be so kind as to go a few kilometres out of the way for me during your coming visit to Biarritz, I shall consider myself highly honored if you will lay the last stone of my house." Napoleon smiled and promised. But that was in 1870, and Napoleon III never returned to Biarritz. That is the reason a stone is missing at Abbadia.
An account is also appropriate here of that other gift to French science and letters of the Château of Chantilly, made to the Institute of France in 1886, by the late Duc d'Aumale, whose tragic death in consequence of the terrible disaster at the Bazaar de Charité, Paris, occurred near in time to that of M. d'Abbadie. The duke was conspicuous as a soldier, as a man of letters, the author of the History of the Princes of Condé, and as a great bibliophile; as a member of the French Academy (1871), taking the place of Montalembert; of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and of the Academy of Fine Arts; and as a patriot, though a banished prince. The gift was made three months after the decree was issued banishing the Orleans princes from France, and after the duke had expostulated with M. Grévy in vain against the step. The deed reads: "Wishing to preserve to France the domain of Chantilly in its integrity, with its woods, lawns, waters, buildings, and all that they contain—trophies, pictures, books, objects of art, and the whole of what forms, as it were, a complete and various monument of French art in all its branches, and of the history of my country in its epochs of glory—I have resolved to commit the trust to a body which has done me the honor of calling me into its ranks by a double title, and which, without being independent of the inevitable transformations of societies, escapes the spirit of faction and all too abrupt shocks, maintaining its independence through political fluctuations. Consequently, I give to the Institute of France, which shall dispose of it according to conditions to be hereafter determined, the domain of Chantilly as it shall exist on the day of my death, with the library and the other artistic and historical collections which I have formed in it, the household furniture, statues, trophies of arms, etc." The sole condition attached to the gift was that nothing should be changed at Chantilly. The chapel, where the heart of Condé is deposited, should be retained, devoted to worship, with special masses to be said at stated times, and the splendid collections of the château should together be called the Condé Museum. In 1889 the Government authorized the duke to return to France. He refused to accept the permission as a matter of favor, but only as one of right. He returned, however, and took his seat in the academy in May of that year.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from articles in La Nature.
Fig. 3.—The Château of Chantilly.
(Presented by the late Duc d'Aumale to the Institute of France.)