give in to an opinion so flattering and so plainly
expressed. On the 7th of June, 1830, I, therefore, became perpetual
secretary of the Academy for the Mathematical Sciences; but, conformably
to the plea of an accumulation of offices, which I had used as an
argument to support, in November, 1822, the election of M. Fournier, I
declared that I should give in my resignation of the Professorship in
the Polytechnic School. Neither the solicitations of Marshal Soult, the
Minister of War, nor those of the most eminent members of the Academy,
could avail in persuading me to renounce this resolution.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] With such precocious heroism it is by no means so clear that the
author might not have had a hand in the revolution, from which he
endeavours above to exculpate himself.

[2] Mechain, member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Institute, was
charged in 1792 with the prolongation of the measure of the arc of the
meridian in Spain as far as Barcelona.

During his operations in the Pyrenees, in 1794, he had known my father,
who was one of the administrators of the department of the Eastern
Pyrenees. Later, in 1803, when the question was agitated as to the
continuation of the measure of the meridian line as far as the Balearic
Islands, M. Mechain went again to Perpignan, and came to pay my father a
visit. As I was about setting off to undergo the examination for
admission at the Polytechnic School, my father ventured to ask him
whether he could not recommend me to M. Monge. "Willingly," answered he;
"but, with the frankness which is my characteristic, I ought not to
leave you unaware that it appears to me improbable that your son, left
to himself, can have rendered himself completely master of the subjects
of which the programme consists. If, however, he be admitted, let him be
destined for the artillery, or for the engineers; the career of the
sciences, of which you have talked to me, is really too difficult to go
through, and unless he had a special calling for it, your son would only
find it deceptive." Anticipating a little the order of dates, let us
compare this advice with what occurred: I went to Toulouse, underwent
the examination, and was admitted; one year and a half afterwards I
filled the situation of secretary at the Observatory, which had become
vacant by the resignation of M. Mechain's son; one year and a half
later, that is to say, four years after the Perpignan "horoscope,"
associated with M. Bio