xcite 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,--

"_His_ name is Arago?"

"What science do you cultivate?"

My neighbour on the left immediately replied,--

"_He_ cultivates astronomy."

"What have you done?"

My neighbour on the right, jealous of my left hand neighbour for having
encroached on his rights at the second question, now hastened to reply,
and said,--

"_He_ has just been measuring the line of the meridian in Spain."

The Empe