[3] This appears to be an oversight, as in a preceding page M. Arago described the fortunate release of Captain Krog from this captivity.

[4] On my return to Paris I hastened to the Jardin des Plantes to pay a visit to the lion, but he received me with a very unamiable gnashing of the teeth.  Think then of the marvellous history of the Florentine lion, the subject of so many engravings, which is offered on the stall of every printseller to the eyes of the moved and astonished passers-by.

[5] An “epileur” is a person who removes superfluous hairs.  We have been unable to ascertain what office of this kind is performed in Mohammedan funerals.

BAILLY.

BIOGRAPHY READ AT THE PUBLIC SITTING OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1844.

INTRODUCTION.

Gentlemen,—­The learned man, illustrious in so many ways, whose life I am going to relate, was taken from France half a century ago.  I hasten to make this remark, so as thoroughly to show that I have selected this subject without being deterred by complaints which I look upon as unjust and inapplicable.  The glory of the members of the early Academy of Sciences is an inheritance for the present Academy.  We must cherish it as we would the glory of later days; we must hallow it with the same respect, we must devote to it the same worship:  the word prescription would here be synonymous with ingratitude.

If it had happened, Gentlemen, that amongst the academicians who preceded us, a man, already illustrious by his labours, and, without personal ambition, yet thrown, despite himself, into the midst of a terrible revolution, exposed to a thousand unrestrained passions, had cruelly disappeared in the political effervescence—­oh! then, any negligence, any delay in studying the facts would be inexcusable; the honourable contemporaries of the victim would soon be no longer there to shed the light of their honest and impartial memory on obscure events; an existence devoted to the cultivation of reason and of truth would come to be appreciated only from documents, on which, for my part, I would not blindly draw, until it shall be proved that, in revolutionary times, we can trust to the uprightness of parties.

I felt in duty bound, Gentlemen, to give you a sketch of the ideas that have led me to present to you a detailed account of the life and labours of a member of the early Academy of Sciences.  The biographies which will soon follow this, will show that the studies I have undertaken respecting Carnot, Condorcet, and Bailly, have not prevented me from attending seriously to our illustrious contemporaries.

To render them a loyal and truthful homage, is the first duty of the secretaries of the Academy, and I will religiously fulfil it; without binding myself, however, to observe a strict chronological order, or to follow the civil registers step by step.