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In Paris also, in the course of about fourteen months (1832-34),

he wrote _Pan Tadeusz,_ his greatest poem-and (with insignificant

exceptions) his last.

The story of Mickiewicz's closing years may be passed over very

briefly. In 1834 he married; his wife was subject to attacks of

insanity, and all his later life was saddened by the struggle

with misfortune and poverty. In 1840 he was called to a newly

founded professorship of Slavic literature at the College de

France. His lectures as holder of this chair are the only

literary work of great importance that he produced during this

last period of his life. Soon after the completion of Pan Tadeusz

he had become absorbed by a religious mysticism that caused him

to turn entirely aside from poetry. In 1841 he fell under the

influence of Andrzej Towianski, a teacher who announced himself

as the prophet of a new religion.