9. The final years
Volta was basically a simple, shy man. In 1801 he wrote to his family from Paris: “In the midst of so many things which should please me and which are really too alluring, I’m not so vain as to think myself more than really I am. Rather than a life full of vainglory, I prefer the sweet tranquility of domestic life.”

Volta had married Teresa Peregrini in 1794. He had two sons by her. After inventing the battery, Volta practically gave up research and most of his teaching, partly because of political involvement and partly because of attachment to his family.
He stopped teaching altogether in 1813 but first the imperial and then the Austrian governments appointed him Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, to make sure that Pavia University did not lose the services of the great physicist. In 1819 he finally retired to his country house in Camnago, where he died on 3^rd March, 1927.