The prescriptions of medicine which, in the mouth of M. Larrey, were blended with the anxieties of a long and constant friendship, failed to induce a modification of of this mortal regime.  Fourier had already experienced, in Egypt and Grenoble, some attacks of aneurism of the heart.  At Paris, it was impossible to be mistaken with respect to the primary cause of the frequent suffocations which he experienced.  A fall, however, which he sustained on the 4th of May, 1830, while descending a flight of stairs, aggravated the malady to an extent beyond what could have been ever feared.  Our colleague, notwithstanding pressing solicitations, persisted in refusing to combat the most threatening symptoms, except by the aid of patience and a high temperature.  On the 16th of May, 1830, about four o’clock in the evening, Fourier experienced in his study a violent crisis the serious nature of which he was far from being sensible of; for, having thrown himself completely dressed upon his bed, he requested M. Petit, a young doctor of his acquaintance who carefully attended him, not to go far away, in order, said he, that we may presently converse together.  But to these words succeeded soon the cries, “Quick, quick! some vinegar!  I am fainting!” and one of the men of science who has shed the brightest lustre upon the Academy had ceased to live.

Gentlemen, this cruel event is too recent, that I should recall here the grief which the Institute experienced upon losing one of its most important members; and those obsequies, on the occasion of which so many persons, usually divided by interests and opinions, united together, in one common feeling of admiration and regret, around the mortal remains of Fourier; and the Polytechnic School swelling in a mass the cortege, in order to render homage to one of its earliest, of its most celebrated professors; and the words which, on the brink of the tomb, depicted so eloquently the profound mathematician, the elegant writer, the upright administrator, the good citizen, the devoted friend.  We shall merely state that Fourier belonged to all the great learned societies of the world, that they united with the most touching unanimity in the mourning of the Academy, in the mourning of all France:  a striking testimony that the republic of letters is no longer, in the present day, merely a vain name!  What, then, was wanting to the memory of our colleague?  A more able successor than I have been to exhibit in full relief the different phases of a life so varied, so laborious, so gloriously interlaced with the greatest events of the most memorable epochs of our history.  Fortunately, the scientific discoveries of the illustrious secretary had nothing to dread from the incompetency of the panegyrist.  My object will have been completely attained if, notwithstanding the imperfection of my sketches, each of you will have learned that the progress of general physics, of terrestrial physics, and of geology, will daily multiply the fertile applications of the Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur, and that this work will transmit the name of Fourier down to the remotest posterity.