in
hostilities with them: resolved never to compromise matters with them,
he yet so calculated his movements beforehand, as not to find himself in
their way. We perceive a wide difference between this disposition and
the ardent impetuous character of the young orator of the popular
society of Auxerre. But what purpose would philosophy serve, if it did
not teach us to conquer our passions? It is not that occasionally the
natural disposition of Fourier did not display itself in full relief.
"It is strange," said one day a certain very influential personage of
the court of Charles X., whom Fourier's servant would not allow to pass
beyond the antechamber of our colleague,--"it is truly strange that your
master should be more difficult of access than a minister!" Fourier
heard the conversation, leaped out of his bed to which he was confined
by indisposition, opened the door of the chamber, and exclaimed, face to
face with the courtier: "Joseph, tell Monsieur, that if I was minister,
I should receive everybody, because it would be my duty to do so; but,
being a private individual, I receive whomsoever I please, and at what
hour soever I please!" Disconcerted by the liveliness of the retort, the
great seignior did not utter one word in reply. We must even believe
that from that moment he resolved not to visit any but ministers, for
the plain man of science heard nothing more of him.

Fourier was endowed with a constitution which held forth a promise of
long life; but what can natural advantages avail against the
anti-hygienic habits which men arbitrarily acquire! In order to guard
against slight attacks of rheumatism, our colleague was in the habit of
clothing himself, even in the hottest season of the year, after a
fashion which is not practised even by travellers condemned to spend the
winter amid the snows of the polar regions. "One would suppose me to be
corpulent," he used to say occasionally with a smile; "be assured,
however, that there is much to deduct from this opinion. If, after the
example of the Egyptian mummies, I was subjected to the operation of
disembowelment,--from which heaven preserve me,--the residue would be
found to be a very slender body." I might add, selecting also my
comparison from the banks of the Nile, that in the apartments of
Fourier, which were always of small extent, and intensely heated even in
summer, the currents of air to which one was exposed resembled sometimes
the terrible simoon, that