The more our secretary had occasion to converse, the greater repugnance he experienced to verbal discussions.  Fourier cut short every debate as soon as there presented itself a somewhat marked difference of opinion, only to resume afterwards the same subject upon the modest pretext of making a small step in advance each time.  Some one asked Fontaine, a celebrated geometer of this Academy, how he occupied his thoughts in society, wherein he maintained an almost absolute silence:  “I observe,” he replied, “the vanity of mankind, to wound it as occasion offers.”  If, like his predecessor, Fourier also studied the baser passions which contend for honours, riches, and power, it was not in order to engage 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 burning wind of the desert, which the caravans dread as much as the plague.