that the house previously occupied, in consequence of a formal decision, by the Mayor of Paris, and by the public offices of the town, ought to have paid a tax of 6,000 livres, and strange enough, that Bailly was responsible for it.  The pretended debt was claimed with harshness.  They demanded the payment of it without delay.  To free himself Bailly was obliged to sell his library, to abandon to the chances of an auction that multitude of valuable books, from which he had sought out, in the silence of his study, and with such remarkable perseverance, the most recondite secrets of the firmament.

This painful separation was followed by two acts that did not afflict him less.

The central government (then directed, it must be allowed, by the Gironde party) placed Bailly under surveillance.  Every eight days the venerable academician was obliged to present himself at the house of the Syndic Procurator of the Departmental Administration of the Lower-Loire, like a vile malefactor, whose every footstep it would be to the interest of society to watch.  What was the true motive for such a strange measure?  This secret has been buried in a tomb where I shall not allow myself to dig for it.

Though painful to me to say so, the odious assimilation of Bailly to a dangerous criminal had not exhausted the rancour of his enemies.  A letter from Roland, the Minister of the Interior, announced very dryly to the unfortunate proscribed man, that the apartments in the Louvre, which his family had occupied for upwards of half a century, had been withdrawn from him.  They had even proceeded so far as to furnish a tipstaff with the order to clear the rooms.

A short time before this epoch, Bailly had found himself obliged to sell his house at Chaillot.  The old Mayor of Paris then had no longer a hearth or a home in the great city which had been the late scene of his devotion, his solicitude, and his sacrifices.  When this reflection occurred to his mind, his eyes filled with tears.

But the grief that Bailly experienced on seeing himself the daily object of odious persecutions, left his patriotic convictions intact.  Vainly did they endeavour several times to transform a legitimate hatred towards individuals into an antipathy towards principles.  They still remember in Brittany the debate raised, by one of these attempts, between our colleague and a Vendean physician, Dr. Blin.  Never, in the season of his greatest popularity, did the president of the National Assembly express himself with more vivacity; never had he defended our first revolution with more eloquence.  Not long since, in the same place, I pointed out to public attention another of our colleagues (Condorcet), who already under the blow of a capital condemnation, devoted his last moments to restore to the light of day the principles of eternal justice, which the fashions and the follies of men had but too much obscured.  At a time of weak or interested convictions, and disgraceful capitulations of conscience, those two examples of unchangeable convictions deserved to be remarked.  I am happy in having found them in the bosom of the Academy of Sciences.