crowd in front of him.
"Citoyens," he said, "Je me nomme Buffon," and laid his head upon the
block.

The noblest outcome of the old and decaying order, overwhelmed in the
most hateful birth frenzy of the new. So in those cataclysms and
revolutions which take place in our own bodies during their development,
when we seem studying in order to become fishes and suddenly make, as it
were, different arrangements and resolve on becoming men--so, doubtless,
many good cells must go, and their united death cry comes up, it may be,
in the pain which an infant feels on teething.

But to return. The man who could be father of such a son, and who could
retain that son's affection, as it is well known that Buffon retained
it, may not perhaps always be strictly accurate, but it will be as well
to pay attention to whatever he may think fit to tell us. These are the
only people whom it is worth while to look to and study from.

"Glory," said Buffon, after speaking of the hours during which he had
laboured, "glory comes always after labour if she can--_and she
generally can_." But in his case she could not well help herself. "He
was conspicuous," says M. Flourens, "for elevation and force of
character, for a love of greatness and true magnificence in all he did.
His great wealth, his handsome person, and graceful manners seemed in
correspondence with the splendour of his genius, so that of all the
gifts which Fortune has it in her power to bestow she had denied him
nothing."

Many of his epigrammatic sayings have passed into proverbs: for example,
that "genius is but a supreme capacity for taking pains." Another and
still more celebrated passage shall be given in its entirety and with
its original setting.

"Style," says Buffon, "is the only passport to posterity. It is not
range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of
science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works
that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about
trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius and true nobility
of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of
discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other
hands that know better how to treat them. The matter is foreign to the
man, and is not of him; the manner is the man himself."[37]

"Le style, c'est l'homme meme." Elsewhere he tells us what true style
is, but I quote from memory and cannot be sure of the pa