Just at the time of sending him to school, he wrote to Madame Daubenton, wife of his able and learned co-operator: "I expect Buffonet on Sunday.

I have arranged all his little matters he will have a private room, with a closet for his man-servant; I have got him a tutor in the school-house itself, and a little companion of his own age.

I do not think that he will be at all unhappy." And, at a later date, when he is expecting this son who has reached man's estate, and has been travelling in Europe: "My son has just arrived; the empress and the grand-duke have treated him very well, and we shall have some fine minerals, the collection of which is being at this moment completed.

I confess that anxiety about his return has taken away my sleep and the power of thinking." When the young Count de Buffon, an officer in the artillery, and at first warmly favorable to the noble professions of the French Revolution, had, like his peers, to mount the scaffold of the Terror, he damned with one word the judges who profaned in his person his father's glory.
"Citizens," he exclaimed from the fatal car, "my name is Buffon." With less respect for the rights of genius than was shown by the Algerian pirates who let pass, without opening them, the chests directed to the great naturalist, the executioner of the Committee of public safety cut off his son's head.
This last drop of bitterness, and the cruel spectacle of social disorder, Buffon had been spared; he had died at the _Jardin du Roi_ on the 14th of April, 1788, preserving at eighty years of age, and even in the feebleness of ill health, all the powers of his intelligence and the calm serenity of 'his soul.

His last lines dictated to his son were addressed to Madame Necker, who had been for a long time past on the most intimate terms with him.