le. The occasion of the breach between them (1824) was an
attempt on Saint-Simon's part to print a production of Comte's as if it
were in some sort connected with Saint-Simon's schemes of social
reorganization. Not only was the breach not repaired, but long
afterwards Comte, as we have said, with painful ungraciousness took to
calling the encourager of his youth by very hard names.

Marriage.

In 1825 Comte married a Mdlle Caroline Massin. His marriage was one of
those of which "magnanimity owes no account to prudence," and it did not
turn out prosperously. His family were strongly Catholic and royalist,
and they were outraged by his refusal to have the marriage performed
other than civilly. They consented, however, to receive his wife, and
the pair went on a visit to Montpellier. Madame Comte conceived a
dislike to the circle she found there, and this was the too early
beginning of disputes which lasted for the remainder of their union. In
the year of his marriage we find Comte writing to the most intimate of
his correspondents:--"I have nothing left but to concentrate my whole
moral existence in my intellectual work, a precious but inadequate
compensation; and so I must give up, if not the most dazzling, still the
sweetest part of my happiness." He tried to find pupils to board with
him, but only one pupil came, and he was soon sent away for lack of
companions. "I would rather spend an evening," wrote the needy
enthusiast, "in solving a difficult question, than in running after some
empty-headed and consequential millionaire in search of a pupil." A
little money was earned by an occasional article in _Le Producteur_, in
which he began to expound the philosophic ideas that were now maturing
in his mind. He announced a course of lectures (1826), which it was
hoped would bring money as well as fame, and which were to be the first
dogmatic exposition of the Positive Philosophy. A friend had said to
him, "You talk too freely, your ideas are getting abroad, and other
people use them without giving you the credit; put your ownership on
record." The lectures attracted hearers so eminent as Humboldt the
cosmologist, Poinsot the geometer and Blainville the physiologist.

Serious illness.

Unhappily, after the third lecture of the course, Comte had a severe
attack of cerebral derangement, brought on by intense and prolonged
meditation, acting on a system that was already irritated by the chagrin
of domestic discomfor