able curiosity. Ends of candles carefully collected
in the kitchen, the corridors and the refectory of the college, and
placed on a hearth concealed by a screen, served during the night to
illuminate the solitary studies by which Fourier prepared himself for
those labours which were destined, a few years afterwards, to adorn his
name and his country.

In a military school directed by monks, the minds of the pupils
necessarily waver only between two careers in life--the church and the
sword. Like Descartes, Fourier wished to be a soldier; like that
philosopher, he would doubtless have found the life of a garrison very
wearisome. But he was not permitted to make the experiment. His demand
to undergo the examination for the artillery, although strongly
supported by our illustrious colleague Legendre, was rejected with a
severity of expression of which you may judge yourselves: "Fourier,"
replied the minister, "not being noble, could not enter the artillery,
although he were a second Newton."

Gentlemen, there is in the strict enforcement of regulations, even when
they are most absurd, something respectable which I have a pleasure in
recognizing; in the present instance nothing could soften the odious
character of the minister's words. It is not true in reality that no one
could formerly enter into the artillery who did not possess a title of
nobility; a certain fortune frequently supplied the want of parchments.
Thus it was not a something undefinable, which, by the way, our
ancestors the Franks had not yet invented, that was wanting to young
Fourier, but rather an income of a few hundred livres, which the men who
were then placed at the head of the country would have refused to
acknowledge the genius of Newton as a just equivalent for! Treasure up
these facts, Gentlemen; they form an admirable illustration of the
immense advances which France has made during the last forty years.
Posterity, moreover, will see in this, not the excuse, but the
explanation of some of those sanguinary dissensions which stained our
first revolution.

Fourier not having been enabled to gird on the sword, assumed the habit
of a Benedictine, and repaired to the Abbey of St. Benoit-sur-Loire,
where he intended to pass the period of his noviciate. He had not yet
taken any vows when, in 1789, every mind was captivated with beautifully
seductive ideas relative to the social regeneration of France. Fourier
now renounced the profession of the Church