Finally, I had just terminated, under very difficult circumstances, the grandest triangulation which had ever been achieved, to prolong the meridian line from France as far as the island of Formentera.

M. de Laplace, without denying the importance and utility of these labours and these researches, saw in them nothing more than indications of promise; M. Lagrange then said to him explicitly:—­

“Even you, M. de Laplace, when you entered the Academy, had done nothing brilliant; you only gave promise.  Your grand discoveries did not come till afterwards.”

Lagrange was the only man in Europe who could with authority address such an observation to him.

M. de Laplace did not reply upon the ground of the personal question, but he added,—­“I maintain that it is useful to young savans to hold out the position of member of the Institute as a future recompense, to excite their zeal.”

“You resemble,” replied M. Halle, “the driver of the hackney coach, who, to excite his horses to a gallop, tied a bundle of hay at the end of his carriage pole; the poor horses redoubled their efforts, and the bundle of hay always flew on before them.  After all, his plan made them fall off, and soon after brought on their death.”

Delambre, Legendre, Biot, insisted on the devotion, and what they termed the courage, with which I had combated arduous difficulties, whether in carrying on the observations, or in saving the instruments and the results already obtained.  They drew an animated picture of the dangers I had undergone.  M. de Laplace ended by yielding when he saw that all the most eminent men of the Academy had taken me under their patronage, and on the day of the election he gave me his vote.  It would be, I must own, a subject of regret with me even to this day, after a lapse of forty-two years, if I had become member of the Institute without having obtained the vote of the author of the Mecanique Celeste.

The Members of the Institute were always presented to the Emperor after he had confirmed their nominations.  On the appointed day, in company with the presidents, with the secretaries of the four classes, and with the academicians who had special publications to offer to the Chief of the State, they assembled in one of the saloons of the Tuileries.  When the Emperor returned from mass, he held a kind of review of these savans, these artists, these literary men, in green uniform.

I must own that the spectacle which I witnessed on the day of my presentation did not edify me.  I even experienced real displeasure in seeing the anxiety evinced by members of the Institute to be noticed.

“You are very young,” said Napoleon to me on coming near me; and without waiting for a flattering reply, which it would not have been difficult to find, he added,—­“What is your name?” And my neighbour on the right, not leaving me time to answer the simple enough question just addressed to me, hastened to say,—­