Buffon was still working at eighty years of age; he had undertaken a dissertation on style, a development of his reception speech at the French Academy.  Great sorrows had crossed his life.  Married late to a young wife whom he loved, he lost her early; she left him a son, brought up under his wing, and the object of his constant solicitude.  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.  Faithful in death to the instincts of order and regularity which had always controlled his mind even in his boldest flight, he requested that all the ceremonies of religion should be fulfilled around his body.  His son had it removed to Montbard, where it lies between his father and his wife.

Buffon had lived long, he had accomplished in peace his great work, he had reaped the fruits of it.  On the eve of the terrible shocks whereof no presage disturbed his spirit, “directed for fifty years towards the great objects of nature,” the illustrious scholar had been permitted to see his statue placed during his lifetime in the Jardin du Roi.  On sending to the Empress Catherine his bust which she had asked him for, he wrote to his son who had charge of it:  “I forgot to remark to you, whilst talking of bust and effigy, that, by the king’s order, they have put at the bottom of my statue the following inscription:  Majestati naturae par ingenium (Genius to match the majesty of nature).  It is not from pride that I send you this, but perhaps Her Majesty will have it put at the bottom of the bust.”