From that time on, he gave himself up entirely to his work as a naturalist. He became Inspector of the nurseries of Versailles and also of those which were maintained by the Ministry of the Interior. In 1806 he was elected a member of the Institute. In 1825 he succeeded his friend André Thouin as Professor of Horticulture at the Botanical Garden, and after a long and cruel illness, which prevented him from lecturing, he died in 1828. In 1801, when the first daughter born of his marriage had died in infancy, he had begged Bancal to transfer to him two perches of land in his domain of Sainte. Radegonde, in order that he might bury his child there. Such was the origin of the little cemetery where Bosc reposes in the midst of his children and his grandchildren. I have not regretted making a pilgrimage and evoking, in the autumnal forest, the phantoms of these Revolutionists and these botanists. How touching a figure is that of this Bosc, whose name recalls--it is Laréveillière-Lépeaux who speaks--"the most generous friendship, the most heroic courage, the purest patriotism, the most active humanity, the most austere probity, the most determined boldness, and at the same time the most extended knowledge in natural science and different branches of administration as well as in political, domestic and rural economy..." and also, let us add, the eternal blindness of the amorous Arnolphe! V. SENLIS |THE spire of the ancient cathedral of Senlis overlooks an immense horizon. This belfry is the lightest, the most elegant, the most harmonious that Gothic art has given us. It rises with a flight so magnificent and so perfectly rhythmical that at the first glance one might think it a growth of nature; it seems to live with the same life as the heavens, the clouds and the birds. This masterly grace, this warm beauty, are, however, the work of time and of men. An architect endowed with genius thought out this miraculous plan, proportioned with this infallible precision the elevation of the different landings, distributed the openings and the surfaces, invented the pointed turrets and the frail columns which flank the edifice, taper off its structure, precipitate its flight and make it impossible to perceive the point at which the square tower is transformed into an octagonal spire, so that the highest pyramid seems to burst forth from a long corolla. Then the centuries have painted the stones with the pale gold of lichens, and have completed the masterpiece. The whole of Senlis seems to have been built for the glory of its spire. Streets, gardens, squares, monuments, houses, all seem to be arranged by a mysterious artist, who persists in incessantly bringing back our glance to the dominating spire, the better to reveal to us all its graces and all its magnificence, at all times and under all lights.