Part 5

A pupil, M. Leboullenger, met one evening in company this same M. Hassenfratz, and had a discussion with him. When he reentered the school in the morning, he mentioned this circumstance to us. "Be on your guard," said one of our comrades to him; "you will be interrogated this evening. Play with caution, for the professor has certainly prepared some great difficulties so as to cause laughter at your expense."

Our anticipations were not mistaken. Scarcely had the pupils arrived in the amphitheatre, when M. Hassenfratz called to M. Leboullenger, who came to the board.

"M. Leboullenger," said the professor to him, "you have seen the moon?" "No, sir." "How, sir! you say that you have never seen the moon?" "I can only, repeat my answer--no, sir." Beside himself, and seeing his prey escape him, by means of this unexpected answer, M. Hassenfratz addressed himself to the inspector charged with the observance of order that day, and said to him, "Sir, there is M. Leboullenger, who pretends never to have seen the moon." "What would you wish me to do?" stoically replied M. Le Brun. Repulsed on this side, the professor turned once more towards M. Leboullenger, who remained calm and earnest in the midst of the unspeakable amusement of the whole amphitheatre, and cried out with undisguised anger, "You persist in maintaining that you have never seen the moon?" "Sir," returned the pupil, "I should deceive you if I told you that I had not heard it spoken of, but I have never seen it." "Sir, return to your place."

After this scene, M. Hassenfratz was but a professor in name; his teaching could no longer be of any use.

At the commencement of the second year, I was appointed "chef de brigade." Hatchette had been professor of hydrography at Collioure; his friends from Roussillon recommended me to him. He received me with great kindness, and even gave me a room in his lodgings. It was there that I had the pleasure of making Poisson's acquaintance, who lived next to us. Every evening the great geometer entered my room, and we passed entire hours in conversing on politics and mathematics, which is certainly not quite the same thing.

In the course of 1804, the school was a prey to political passions, and that through the fault of the government.

They wished forthwith to oblige the pupils to sign an address of congratulation on the discovery of the conspiracy in which Moreau was implicated. They refused to do so on the ground that it was not for them to pronounce on a cause which had been in the hands of justice. It must, however, be remarked, that Moreau had not yet dishonoured himself by taking service in the Russian army, which had come to attack the French under the walls of Dresden.

The pupils were invited to make a manifestation in favour of the institution of the Legion of Honour. This again they refused. They knew well that the cross, given without inquiry and without control, would be, in most cases, the recompense of charlatanism, and not of true merit.

The transformation of the Consular into the Imperial Government gave rise to very animated discussions in the interior of the school.

Many pupils refused to add their felicitations to the mean adulations of the constituted bodies.

General Lacuee, who was appointed governor of the school, reported this opposition to the Emperor.

"M. Lacuee," cried Napoleon, in the midst of a group of courtiers, who applauded with speech and gesture, "you cannot retain at the school those pupils who have shown such ardent Republicanism; you will send them away." Then, collecting himself, he added, "I will first know their names and their stages of promotion." Seeing the list the next day, he did not proceed further than the first name, which was the first in the artillery. "I will not drive away the first men in advancement," said he. "Ah! if they had been at the bottom of the list! M. Lacuee, leave them alone."

Nothing was more curious than the seance to which General Lacuee came to receive the oath of obedience from the pupils. In the vast amphitheatre which contained them, one could not discern a trace of the gravity which such a ceremony should inspire. The greater part, instead of answering, at the call of their names, "I swear it," cried out, "Present."

All at once the monotony of this scene was interrupted by a pupil, son of the Conventionalist Brissot, who called out in a stentorian voice, "I will not take the oath of obedience to the Emperor." Lacuee, pale and with little presence of mind, ordered a detachment of armed pupils placed behind him to go and arrest the recusant. The detachment, of which I was at the head, refused to obey. Brissot, addressing himself to the General, with the greatest calmness said to him, "Point out the place to which you wish me to go; do not force the pupils to dishonour themselves by laying hands on a comrade who has no desire to resist."

The next morning Brissot was expelled.

About this time, M. Mechain, who had been sent to Spain to prolong the meridional line as far as Formentera, died at Castellon de la Plana. His son, Secretary at the Observatory, immediately gave in his resignation. Poisson offered me the situation. I declined his first proposal. I did not wish to renounce the military career,--the object of all my predilections, and in which, moreover, I was assured of the protection of Marshal Lannes,--a friend of my father's. Nevertheless I accepted, on trial, the position offered me in the Observatory, after a visit which I made to M. de Laplace in company with M. Poisson, under the express condition that I could re-enter the Artillery if that should suit me. It was from this cause that my name remained inscribed on the list of the pupils of the school. I was only detached to the Observatory on a special service.

I entered this establishment, then, on the nomination of Poisson, my friend, and through the intervention of Laplace. The latter loaded me with civilities. I was happy and proud when I dined in the Rue de Tournon with the great geometer. My mind and my heart were much disposed to admire all, to respect all, that was connected with him who had discovered the cause of the secular equation of the moon, had found in the movement of this planet the means of calculating the ellipticity of the earth, had traced to the laws of attraction the long inequalities of Jupiter and of Saturn, &c. &c. But what was my disenchantment, when one day I heard Madame de Laplace, approaching her husband, say to him, "Will you entrust to me the key of the sugar?"

Some days afterwards, a second incident affected me still more vividly. M. de Laplace's son was preparing for the examinations of the Polytechnic School. He came sometimes to see me at the Observatory. In one of his visits I explained to him the method of continued fractions, by help of which Lagrange obtains the roots of numerical equations. The young man spoke of it to his father with admiration. I shall never forget the rage which followed the words of Emile de Laplace, and the severity of the reproaches which were addressed to me, for having patronized a mode of proceeding which may be very long in theory, but which evidently can in no way be found fault with on the score of its elegance and precision. Never had a jealous prejudice shown itself more openly, or under a more bitter form. "Ah!" said I to myself, "how true was the inspiration of the ancients when they attributed weaknesses to him who nevertheless made Olympus tremble by a frown!"

Here I should mention, in order of time, a circumstance which might have produced the most fatal consequences for me. The fact was this:--

I have described above, the scene which caused the expulsion of Brissot's son from the Polytechnic School. I had entirely lost sight of him for several months, when he came to pay me a visit at the Observatory, and placed me in the most delicate, the most terrible, position that an honest man ever found himself in.

"I have not seen you," he said to me, "because since leaving the school I have practised daily firing with a pistol; I have now acquired a skill beyond the common, and I am about to employ it in ridding France of the tyrant who has confiscated all her liberties. My measures are taken: I have hired a small room on the Carrousel, close to the place by which Napoleon, on coming out from the court, will pass to review the cavalry; from the humble window of my apartment will the ball be fired which will go through his head."

I leave it to be imagined with what despair I received this confidence. I made every imaginable effort to deter Brissot from his sinister project; I remarked how all those who had rushed on enterprises of this nature had been branded in history by the odious title of assassin. Nothing succeeded in shaking his fatal resolution; I only obtained from him a promise on his honour that the execution of it should be postponed for a time, and I put myself in quest of means for rendering it abortive.

The idea of announcing Brissot's project to the authorities did not even enter my thoughts. It seemed a fatality which came to smite me, and of which I must undergo the consequences, however serious they might be.

I counted much on the solicitations of Brissot's mother, already so cruelly tried during the revolution. I went to her home, in the Rue de Conde, and implored her earnestly to cooeperate with me in preventing her son from carrying out his sanguinary resolution. "Ah, sir," replied this lady, who was naturally a model of gentleness, "if Silvain" (this was the name of her son) "believes that he is accomplishing a patriotic duty, I have neither the intention nor the desire to turn him from his project."

It was from myself that I must henceforth draw all my resources. I had remarked that Brissot was addicted to the composition of romances and pieces of poetry. I encouraged this passion, and every Sunday, above all, when I knew that there would be a review, I went to fetch him, and drew him into the country, in the environs of Paris. I listened then complacently to the reading of those chapters of his romance which he had composed during the week.

The first excursions frightened me a little, for armed with his pistols, Brissot seized every occasion of showing his great skill; and I reflected that this circumstance would lead to my being considered as his accomplice, if he ever carried out his project. At last, his pretensions to literary fame, which I flattered to the utmost, the hopes (though I had none myself) which I led him to conceive of the success of an attachment of which he had confided the secret to me, made him receive with attention the reflections which I constantly made to him on his enterprise. He determined on making a journey beyond the seas, and thus relieved me from the most serious anxiety which I have experienced in all my life.

Brissot died after having covered the walls of Paris with printed handbills in favour of the Bourbon restoration.

I had scarcely entered the Observatory, when I became the fellow-labourer of Biot in researches on the refraction of gases, already commenced by Borda.