PARIS, June 4, 1832. I have received your kind letter with great pleasure and hasten to reply. What you write gives me the more satisfaction because it opens to me in the near future the hope of establishing myself in your neighborhood and devoting to my country the fruits of my labor. It is true, as you suppose, that the death of M. Cuvier has sensibly changed my position; indeed, I have already been asked to continue his work on fishes in connection with M. Valenciennes, who made me this proposition the day after your letter reached me. The conditions offered me are, indeed, very tempting, but I am too little French by character, and too anxious to live in Switzerland, not to prefer the place you can offer me, however small the appointments, if they do but keep me above actual embarrassment. I say thus much only in order to answer that clause in your letter where you touch upon this question. I would add that I leave the field quite free in this respect, and that I am yours without reserve, if, indeed, within the fortnight, the urgency of the Parisians does not carry the day, or, rather, as soon as I write you that I have been able finally to withdraw. You easily understand that I cannot bluntly decline offers which seem to those who make them so brilliant. But I shall hold out against them to the utmost. My course with reference to my own publications will have shown you that I do not care for a lucrative position from personal interest; that, on the contrary, I should always be ready to use such means as I may have at my disposition for the advancement of the institution confided to my care. My work will still detain me for four or five months at Paris,--my time being after that completely at my disposal. The period at which I should like to begin my lectures is therefore very near, and I think if your people are favorably disposed toward the creation of a new professorship we must not let them grow cold. But you have shown me so much kindness that I may well leave to your care, in concert with your friends, the decision of this point; the more so since you are willing to take charge of my interests, until you see the success of what you are pleased to look upon as an advantage to your institution, while for me it is the realization of a sincere desire to do what I can for the advancement of science, and the instruction of our youth. . . The next letter from M. Coulon (June 18, 1832) announces that the sum of eighty louis having been guaranteed for three years, chiefly by private individuals, but partly also by the city, they were now able to offer a chair of natural history at once to their young countryman. In conclusion, he adds:--