Buffon, or, to give him his full title, Georges-Louis-Leclerc-de-Buffon lived here a life of retirement, amid a comfort, perhaps even of luxury, that caused his jealous critics to say that he worked in a velvet coat, and that he was a sort of eighteenth century "nature-fakir." This is probably an injustice. In 1774 Louis XV made the "_terre de Buffon_" a countship, but the naturalist chose not to reside in the village of the name, but to live at Montbard some leagues away. Montbard's actual celebrity came long before the time of Buffon, for its chateau was built in the fourteenth century and was for centuries the possessor of an illustrious sequence of annals intimately associated with the dukedom of Burgundy. Jean-Sans-Peur, it is to be noted, passed a portion of his youth within its walls. This gives it at once rank as a royal chateau, though that was not actually its classification. The Princesse Anne, sister of Philippe le Bon, here married the Duke of Bedford in 1423. All this would seem fame enough for Montbard, but the local old men and women know no more of their remote rulers than they do of Buffon; local pride is a very doubtful commodity. It is disconcerting for a stranger to accost some _bon homme_ or _bonne femme_ to learn the way to the Chateau de Buffon, and to receive in reply a simple stare and the observation, "I don't know the man." Aside, to some crony, you may hear the observation, "Who are these strangers and what do they want with their man Buffon anyway?" This may seem an exaggeration, but it is not, and furthermore the thing may happen anywhere. Glory is but as smoke, and local fame is often an infinitesimal thing. _Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas!_ Buffon wrote his extensive "Histoire Naturelle" at Montbard. It created much admiration at the time. To-day Buffon, his work and his chateau are all but forgotten or ignored, and but few visitors come to continue the idolatry of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who kissed the "_seuil de la noble demure_." Not long since, within some few years at any rate, a former friend of Alfred de Musset quoted some little known lines of the poet on this "_berceau de la histoire naturelle_," with the result that quite recently the local authorities, in establishing the Musée Buffon, have caused them, to be carved on a panel in the naturalist's former study at the chateau. "Buffon, que ton ombre pardonne A une témérité D'ajouter une fleur à la double couronne Que sur ton front mit l'Immortalité." Buffon's additions to the old chateau were made for comfort, whatever they may have lacked of romanticism. The French Pliny was evidently not in the least romantically inclined, or he would not have levelled these historic walls and the alleyed walks and gardens laid out in the profuse and formal manner of those of Italy. The result is a poor substitute for a picturesque grass-grown ruin, or a faithfully restored mediæval castle.