od.

Though Minoret was very little of a humbug, he invented the famous balm
of Lelievre, so much extolled by the "Mercure de France," the weekly
organ of the Encyclopedists, in whose columns it was permanently
advertised. The apothecary Lelievre, a clever man, saw a stroke
of business where Minoret had only seen a new preparation for the
dispensary, and he loyally shared his profits with the doctor, who was
a pupil of Rouelle in chemistry as well as of Bordeu in medicine. Less
than that would make a man a materialist.

The doctor married for love in 1778, during the reign of the "Nouvelle
Heloise," when persons did occasionally marry for that reason. His
wife was a daughter of the famous harpsichordist Valentin Mirouet,
a celebrated musician, frail and delicate, whom the Revolution slew.
Minoret knew Robespierre intimately, for he had once been instrumental
in awarding him a gold medal for a dissertation on the following
subject: "What is the origin of the opinion that covers a whole family
with the shame attaching to the public punishment of a guilty member of
it? Is that opinion more harmful than useful? If yes, in what way can
the harm be warded off." The Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences at
Metz, to which Minoret belonged, must possess this dissertation in the
original. Though, thanks to this friendship, the Doctor's wife need
have had no fear, she was so in dread of going to the scaffold that
her terror increased a disposition to heart disease caused by the
over-sensitiveness of her nature. In spite of all the precautions taken
by the man who idolized her, Ursula unfortunately met the tumbril of
victims among whom was Madame Roland, and the shock caused her death.
Minoret, who in tenderness to his wife had refused her nothing, and had
given her a life of luxury, found himself after her death almost a
poor man. Robespierre gave him an appointment as surgeon-in-charge of a
hospital.

Though the name of Minoret obtained during the lively debates to which
mesmerism gave rise a certain celebrity which occasionally recalled
him to the minds of his relatives, still the Revolution was so great a
destroyer of family relations that in 1813 Nemours knew little of Doctor
Minoret, who was induced to think of returning there to die, like the
hare to its form, by a circumstance that was wholly accidental.

Who has not felt in traveling through France, where the eye is often
wearied by the monotony of plains, the charming se