One of the most interesting members of this Academy, M. de Larnaud, he describes as "a Universal Dictionary in a human form, all the ashes of the Alexandrian Library contained in the skull of a living man." M. de Larnaud, he declares, "knew everything and impassioned everything." He had engaged in the Revolution in 1789 with the ardor of a delirium, but after the massacre of the Tenth of August, he turned his sympathies to the victims. He was intimate with the Girondins,—above all with Madame Roland and Vergniaud—and he accepted heartily their doctrine of a free Republic which should be wise and pure. He did not mourn their fate on the scaffold which was their pedestal for history, but he mourned that vote which they gave "for the death of the king to save the people." Although a nation is often saved by a martyrdom, he knew that it is never saved by a crime. M. de Larnaud had no less enthusiasm for poetry and literature than for politics. He was a comrade of Rouget de Lisle, the author of the _Marsellaise Hymn_; he had taken part at sittings of the Academies; he was a member of all the _Cercles_; he followed all the Courts, visited all the _Salôns_, attended all the theatres, absorbing all that was knowable, all that pertained to the two orders of things. He remembered everything and would tell it with a manner and gesture that made the hearer understand and behold it all. Everything—antiquity, past history and present—was to be learned from him. He was quick to perceive the bent of Lamartine. He visited the young man in his chamber and discoursed familiarly with him, as though both were of the same age and plane of intelligence. He did not venture, however, to speak with like freedom in the drawing-room in presence of the uncle, the pious aunts, and the various classes of visitors. But in young Lamartine's chamber he would display his old-time enthusiasm for the great men and great achievements at the beginning of the Revolution before the period of the ascendancy of the populace, the Commune of Paris, and the Terror. The philosopher was again manifest in him under the simulacrum of the man of the world, and he denounced the Imperial régime of Bonaparte with fierceness. From him Lamartine derived the conception of the scenes, the men and characters which he set forth so admirably in the _History of the Girondists_. His friendship remained constant till his death.