burning wind of the desert, which the caravans
dread as much as the plague.

The prescriptions of medicine which, in the mouth of M. Larrey, were
blended with the anxieties of a long and constant friendship, failed to
induce a modification of of this mortal regime. Fourier had already
experienced, in Egypt and Grenoble, some attacks of aneurism of the
heart. At Paris, it was impossible to be mistaken with respect to the
primary cause of the frequent suffocations which he experienced. A fall,
however, which he sustained on the 4th of May, 1830, while descending a
flight of stairs, aggravated the malady to an extent beyond what could
have been ever feared. Our colleague, notwithstanding pressing
solicitations, persisted in refusing to combat the most threatening
symptoms, except by the aid of patience and a high temperature. On the
16th of May, 1830, about four o'clock in the evening, Fourier
experienced in his study a violent crisis the serious nature of which he
was far from being sensible of; for, having thrown himself completely
dressed upon his bed, he requested M. Petit, a young doctor of his
acquaintance who carefully attended him, not to go far away, in order,
said he, that we may presently converse together. But to these words
succeeded soon the cries, "Quick, quick! some vinegar! I am fainting!"
and one of the men of science who has shed the brightest lustre upon the
Academy had ceased to live.

Gentlemen, this cruel event is too recent, that I should recall here
the grief which the Institute experienced upon losing one of its most
important members; and those obsequies, on the occasion of which so many
persons, usually divided by interests and opinions, united together, in
one common feeling of admiration and regret, around the mortal remains
of Fourier; and the Polytechnic School swelling in a mass the cortege,
in order to render homage to one of its earliest, of its most celebrated
professors; and the words which, on the brink of the tomb, depicted so
eloquently the profound mathematician, the elegant writer, the upright
administrator, the good citizen, the devoted friend. We shall merely
state that Fourier belonged to all the great learned societies of the
world, that they united with the most touching unanimity in the mourning
of the Academy, in the mourning of all France: a striking testimony that
the republic of letters is no longer, in the present day, merely a vain
name! What, then, was wanting to the