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His reputation rose so high in Paris, that mademoiselle de Guise was desirous to make him her physician; but it was not without difficulty that he was prevailed upon by his friend, Dr. Dodart, to accept the place. He was by this new advancement laid under the necessity of keeping a chariot, an equipage very unsuitable to his temper; but while he complied with those exterior appearances, which the publick had a right to demand from him, he remitted nothing of his former austerity, in the more private and essential parts of his life, which he had always the power of regulating according to his own disposition.

In two years and a half the princess fell sick, and was despaired of by Morin, who was a great master of prognosticks. At the time when she thought herself in no danger he pronounced her death inevitable; a declaration to the highest degree disagreeable, but which was made more easy to him than to any other, by his piety and artless simplicity. Nor did his sincerity produce any ill consequences to himself; for the princess, affected by his zeal, taking a ring from her finger, gave it him, as the last pledge of her affection, and rewarded him still more to his satisfaction, by preparing for death with a true Christian piety. She left him, by will, a yearly pension of two thousand livres, which was always regularly paid him.

No sooner was the princess dead, but he freed himself from the encumbrance of his chariot, and retired to St. Victor, without a servant; having, however, augmented his daily allowance with a little rice, boiled in water. Dodart, who had undertaken the charge of being ambitious on his account, procured him, at the restoration of the academy, in 1699, to be nominated associate botanist; not knowing, what he would doubtless have been pleased with the knowledge of, that he introduced into that assembly the man that was to succeed him in his place of pensionary.

Dr. Morin was not one who had upon his hands the labour of adapting himself to the duties of his condition, but always found himself naturally adapted to them. He had, therefore, no difficulty in being constant at the assemblies of the academy, notwithstanding the distance of places, while he had strength enough to support the journey. But his regimen was not equally effectual to produce vigour as to prevent distempers; and, being sixty-four years old at his admission, he could not continue his assiduity more than a year after the death of Dodart, whom he succeeded in 1707.

When Mr. Tournefort went to pursue his botanical inquiries in the Levant, he desired Dr. Morin to supply his place of demonstrator of the plants in the Royal garden, and rewarded him for the trouble, by inscribing to him a new plant, which he brought from the east, by the name of Morina orientalis, as he named others the Do-darto, the Fagonne, the Bignonne, the Phelipee. These are compliments proper to be made by the botanists, not only to those of their own rank, but to the greatest persons; for a plant is a monument of a more durable nature than a medal or an obelisk; and yet, as a proof that even these vehicles are not always sufficient to transmit to futurity the name conjoined with them, the Nicotiana is now scarcely known by any other name than that of tobacco.

Dr. Morin, advancing far in age, was now forced to take a servant, and, what was yet a more essential alteration, prevailed upon himself to take an ounce of wine a day, which he measured with the same exactness as a medicine bordering upon poison. He quitted, at the same time, all his practice in the city, and confined it to the poor of his neighbourhood, and his visits to the Hotel-Dieu; but his weakness increasing, he was forced to increase his quantity of wine, which yet he always continued to adjust by weight [48].