of the success of
an attachment of which he had confided the secret to me, made him
receive with attention the reflections which I constantly made to him on
his enterprise. He determined on making a journey beyond the seas, and
thus relieved me from the most serious anxiety which I have experienced
in all my life.

Brissot died after having covered the walls of Paris with printed
handbills in favour of the Bourbon restoration.

I had scarcely entered the Observatory, when I became the
fellow-labourer of Biot in researches on the refraction of gases,
already commenced by Borda.

While engaged in this work the celebrated academician and I often
conversed on the interest there would be in resuming in Spain the
measurement interrupted by the death of Mechain. We submitted our
project to Laplace, who received it with ardour, procured the necessary
funds, and the Government confided to us two this important mission.

M. Biot, I, and the Spanish commissary Rodriguez departed from Paris in
the commencement of 1806. We visited, on our way, the stations indicated
by Mechain; we made some important modifications in the projected
triangulation, and at once commenced operations.

An inaccurate direction given to the reflectors established at Iviza, on
the mountain Campvey, rendered the observations made on the continent
extremely difficult. The light of the signal of Campvey was very rarely
seen, and I was, during six months, in the _Desierto de las Palmas_,
without being able to see it, whilst at a later period the light
established at the Desierto, but well directed, was seen every evening
from Campvey. It will easily be imagined what must be the _ennui_
experienced by a young and active astronomer, confined to an elevated
peak, having for his walk only a space of twenty square metres, and for
diversion only the conversation of two Carthusians, whose convent was
situated at the foot of the mountain, and who came in secret,
infringing the rule of their order.

At the time when I write these lines, old and infirm, my legs scarcely
able to sustain me, my thoughts revert involuntarily to that epoch of my
life when, young and vigorous, I bore the greatest fatigues, and walked
day and night, in the mountainous countries which separate the kingdoms
of Valencia and Catalonia from the kingdom of Aragon, in order to
reestablish our geodesic signals which the storms had overset.

I was at Valencia towards the middle of October, 1806