Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

brother-in-law, Perier, to inform him too of the death of his collabora- ́

tor. ‘A few days after I wrote to you...welost Mr. Descartes as a result

of a sickness similar to what I had some days previously. I still sigh when

writing about it.’Chanut took advantage of the opportunity not only to

praise his departed friend, but also to emphasize their joint conclusion, in

opposition to Pascal, that barometric pressure is affected by variations in

temperature, humidity, and wind speed.

Meanwhile, Chanut retained possession of Descartes’ papers or, at least,

of those that he had brought from Egmond to Stockholm, and he planned

to pass them on to his brother-in-law, Claude Clerselier.He had no

opportunity to do this until he returned to Paris in, when he travelled

bysea to Rouen and then by boat and barge to Paris. The boat sank

in the river Seine, near the Porte de l’Ecole, and its contents remained

atthe bottom of the river for three days. When they managed to retrieve

the trunk containing Descartes’ papers, they were sufficiently wet that it

required a team of assistants to spread them out to dry. In the course of

these primitive efforts at recovery, many of the pages were separated and

confused, which helps to explain the problems involved subsequently in

distinguishing one letter from another.

Within a year of Descartes’ death, Queen Christina had both arranged

forher official coronation and begun to consider abdicating the throne

and joining the Catholic Church.She had her cousin, Karl Gustav,

appointed heir to the crown, and, following a delay of three years, she

finally abdicated in June. She left Sweden almost immediately and

was officially received into the Catholic Church in Brussels, on her journey

south to Rome. Meantime, Chanut also left Sweden and was appointed

French ambassador to the United Provinces in. Many of the scholars

whom the queen had invited to Stockholm had either left or died. Chanut

remained in his new diplomatic post in The Hague for two years, and later

returned to Paris, where he died in.

By this time, Descartes’ reputation had sufficiently improved that the

idea of returning his remains to his native country was much less contro-

versial than it might have been when he died. The French ambassador to

Sweden at that time, M. le Chevalier de Terlon, fully supported the idea,

and onMayDescartes’ body was exhumed from the relatively

anonymous grave where it had lain for sixteen years. His remains were

placed in a new coffin, and the long return journey to Paris began in June

. Those who accompanied the coffin travelled by sea to Copenhagen,