rnment (then directed, it must be allowed, by the
Gironde party) placed Bailly under surveillance. Every eight days the
venerable academician was obliged to present himself at the house of the
Syndic Procurator of the Departmental Administration of the Lower-Loire,
like a vile malefactor, whose every footstep it would be to the interest
of society to watch. What was the true motive for such a strange
measure? This secret has been buried in a tomb where I shall not allow
myself to dig for it.

Though painful to me to say so, the odious assimilation of Bailly to a
dangerous criminal had not exhausted the rancour of his enemies. A
letter from Roland, the Minister of the Interior, announced very dryly
to the unfortunate proscribed man, that the apartments in the Louvre,
which his family had occupied for upwards of half a century, had been
withdrawn from him. They had even proceeded so far as to furnish a
tipstaff with the order to clear the rooms.

A short time before this epoch, Bailly had found himself obliged to sell
his house at Chaillot. The old Mayor of Paris then had no longer a
hearth or a home in the great city which had been the late scene of his
devotion, his solicitude, and his sacrifices. When this reflection
occurred to his mind, his eyes filled with tears.

But the grief that Bailly experienced on seeing himself the daily object
of odious persecutions, left his patriotic convictions intact. Vainly
did they endeavour several times to transform a legitimate hatred
towards individuals into an antipathy towards principles. They still
remember in Brittany the debate raised, by one of these attempts,
between our colleague and a Vendean physician, Dr. Blin. Never, in the
season of his greatest popularity, did the president of the National
Assembly express himself with more vivacity; never had he defended our
first revolution with more eloquence. Not long since, in the same place,
I pointed out to public attention another of our colleagues (Condorcet),
who already under the blow of a capital condemnation, devoted his last
moments to restore to the light of day the principles of eternal
justice, which the fashions and the follies of men had but too much
obscured. At a time of weak or interested convictions, and disgraceful
capitulations of conscience, those two examples of unchangeable
convictions deserved to be remarked. I am happy in having found them in
the bosom of the Academy of Sciences.

Tranquillity of min