On the 13th of August, 1792, HaÜy, Lhomond, and the other professors at the college of Cardinal Lemoine, were arrested as non-jurors, and were shut up in the seminary of St. Firmin, temporarily converted into a prison. Near St. Firmin lived a young student, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was destined soon to become one of the stars of France. He had pursued his studies at the college of Lemoine; and not less devoted to his professors than passionately fond of science, without giving a thought to the danger to which he exposed himself, he resolved on saving HaÜy and his companions.

By great perseverance he persuaded the members of the Academy of Sciences to appeal in favour of HaÜy; and an order of liberation was granted. Geoffroy brought it in great haste; and a few days after, HaÜy obtained from Tallien the same liberty for Lhomond that Geoffroy and the Academy had obtained for himself. But several of HaÜy’s colleagues were still in prison. It was the day before the September massacres; and though nothing of these wild projects was officially known to the public, after the Brunswick manifesto something terrible was expected. Geoffroy, at any price, was resolved on saving his masters from the danger threatening them. On the 2nd of September, at the moment when the massacres had already begun at the Abbaye and La Force, he disguised himself as a commissary of the prisons, obtained access by this means to the prisoners, and informed them of the means he had prepared to facilitate their escape.

“No,” answered one of them, the AbbÉ D’Keranran; “no, we will not leave our brethren; our flight would make their deaths more certain.”

This sublime refusal grieved Geoffroy, without discouraging him. At night he took a ladder and went to St. Firmin, standing by an angle of the wall that he had taken care to indicate to the AbbÉ D’Keranran and his companion that same morning. He remained there for more than eight hours without seeing a soul. At last a priest appeared, and was soon safely out of the fatal place. Several others followed. One of them, on climbing the wall too hastily, fell and hurt his foot. Geoffroy took him in his arms, and carried him to a barn near by. He then ran back to his post, and by his help more priests escaped. Twelve victims had thus been snatched from death, when a shot was fired on Geoffroy from the garden, and touched his clothes. He was then on the top of the wall; and, entirely absorbed in his generous task, he did not perceive that the sun was up. He was obliged to come down, and leave both the happy and the miserable at once, for those that he had been unable to save he was never to see again.—(Life of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, by Isidore Geoffroy.)