t in the
last six months of his life. He expired, or, to use a more proper
term, went out, on the 1st of March, 1714, at the age of eighty years,
without any distemper, and merely for want of strength, having
enjoyed, by the benefit of his regimen, a long and healthy life, and a
gentle and easy death.

This extraordinary regimen was but part of the daily regulation of his
life, of which all the offices were carried on with a regularity and
exactness nearly approaching to that of the planetary motions.

He went to bed at seven, and rose at two, throughout the year. He
spent, in the morning, three hours at his devotions, and went to the
Hotel-Dieu, in the summer, between five and six, and, in the winter,
between six and seven, hearing mass, for the most part, at Notre Dame.
After his return he read the holy scripture, dined at eleven, and,
when it was fair weather, walked till two in the Royal garden, where
he examined the new plants, and gratified his earliest and strongest
passion. For the remaining part of the day, if he had no poor to
visit, he shut himself up, and read books of literature or physick,
but chiefly physick, as the duty of his profession required. This,
likewise, was the time he received visits, if any were paid him. He
often used this expression: "Those that come to see me, do me honour;
those that stay away, do me a favour." It is easy to conceive, that a
man of this temper was not crowded with salutations: there was only
now and then an Antony that would pay Paul a visit.

Among his papers was found a Greek and Latin index to Hippocrates,
more copious and exact than that of Pini, which he had finished only a
year before his death. Such a work required the assiduity and patience
of a hermit [49]. There is, likewise, a journal of the weather, kept
without interruption, for more than forty years, in which he has
accurately set down the state of the barometer and thermometer, the
dryness and moisture of the air, the variations of the wind in the
course of the day, the rain, the thunders, and even the sudden storms,
in a very commodious and concise method, which exhibits, in a little
room, a great train of different observations. What numbers of such
remarks had escaped a man less uniform in his life, and whose
attention had been extended to common objects!

All the estate which he left is a collection of medals, another of
herbs, and a library rated at two thousand crowns; which make it
evident that