on of Condorcet.

I should regret if we had to judge of the sentiments of Bailly, after
this defeat, by those of his adherents. Their anger found vent in terms
of unpardonable asperity. They said that D'Alembert had "basely betrayed
friendship, honour, and the first principles of probity."

They here alluded to a promise of protection, support, cooeperation,
dating ten years back. But was his promise absolute? Engaging himself
personally to Bailly for a situation that might not become vacant for
ten or fifteen years, had D'Alembert, contrary to his duty as an
academician, declared beforehand, that any other candidate, whatever
might be his talents, would be to him as not existing?

This is what ought to have been ascertained, before giving themselves up
to such violent and odious imputations.

Was it not quite natural that the geometer D'Alembert, having to
pronounce his opinion between two honourable learned men, gave the
preference to the candidate who seemed to him most imbued with the
higher mathematics? The eloges of Condorcet were, besides, by their
style, much more in harmony with those that the Academy had approved
during three quarters of a century. Before the declaration of the
vacancy on the 27th of February, 1773, D'Alembert said to Voltaire,
relative to the recueil by Condorcet, "Some one asked me the other day
what I thought of that work. I answered by writing on the frontispiece,
'Justice, propriety, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance,
and nobleness.'" And Voltaire wrote, on the 1st of March, "I have read,
while dying, the little book by M. de Condorcet; it is as good in its
departments as the eloges by Fontenelle. There is a more noble and more
modest philosophy in it, though bold."

And excitement in words and action could not be legitimately reproached
in a man who had felt himself supported by a conviction of such distinct
and powerful influence.

Among the eloges by Bailly, there is one, that of the Abbe de Lacaille,
which not having been written for a literary academy, shows no longer
any trace of inflation or declamation, and might, it seems to me,
compete with some of the best eloges by Condorcet. Yet, it is curious,
that this excellent biography contributed, perhaps as much as
D'Alembert's opposition, to make Bailly's claims fail. Vainly did the
celebrated astronomer flatter himself in his exordium, "that M. de
Fouchy, who, as Secretary of the Academy, had already paid his trib