Complete Works, Volume I

And indeed, he was so little desirous of honors and profit that he was elected Royal Professor of Mathematics in the year 1645 against his will, with Cardinal Alphonse du Plessis, brother of Armand Richelieu, promoting and nearly compelling him. His inaugural Oration is extant, and to that office is owed the Institutio Astronomica, already published so many times, set forth in lectures which were attended not only by a very crowded audience of youths, but by men of every age, very many old men, and most learned men. Which, to the honor of the sciences, I do not remember having seen anywhere else except in Amsterdam, when Gerardus Joannes Vossius was lecturing, not indeed to beginners alone, but to the elderly and those retired from service, flocking from all sides to that Varro, even setting Mercury aside.

Without doubt, that professorship was adverse to our Gassendi’s good health; for a cough and inflammation of the lungs followed therefrom. Therefore, he sought Provence, so that he might be restored by his native air. Yet he was not permitted to remain long at Digne, as the excellent Vicegerent so delighted in his company that he could not live without Gassendi. Thus he always accompanied Valois, not only to refresh the Prince’s mind with the delight of studies, but, as affairs were then troubled, to assist him with his wisdom as a partner in his counsels; until, when the Vicegerent was called to the Court, he himself returned to Digne, and remained there until the year 1653. In that year he came to Paris with François Bernier, the physician of Angers (who, after Gassendi’s burial, set out for Egypt and now practices medicine at Memphis), and with his friend Antoine Potier; and he was received into your radiant house, most illustrious Montmor, with such kindness from you and your most excellent wife, and with such reverence from your servants, that he seemed to be another master: yet he omitted no part of the respect due to the splendor of your birth, nor of the veneration due to those virtues by which you strive to surpass the gifts of Fortune.

Gassendi was entirely occupied in preparing the system of his Philosophy, after the publication of the lives of Tycho and Copernicus, when he fell into illness in the year 1654. From this he was indeed relieved by an intermission of his studies and by the drawing of a quite large quantity of blood from his elderly body, by which his strength was somewhat weakened. For whether you blame the fuel of the disease lurking within, or the remedy of the disease, phlebotomy, or the intemperance of his studies, or his advancing age, it is certain that from that time Gassendi did not enjoy prosperous health, nor did he sustain the walks in which he used to delight in the garden, nor long conversations with his friends.