their writings the proper rules imposed on
every public body. The rod falls heavily on Jerome de Lalande, the
mathematician and astronomer who continues the work of Montucla,
publicly and in a humiliating way, the blow being given by his
colleagues who are thus delegated for the purpose. "A member of
the Institute," says the imperial note,[6239] "well known for his
attainments, but now fallen into an infantile state, is not wise enough
to keep his mouth shut, and tries to have himself talked about, at one
time by advertisements unworthy of his old reputation as well as of the
body to which he belongs, and again by openly professing atheism, the
great enemy of all social organization." Consequently, the presidents
and secretaries of the Institute, summoned by the minister, notify the
Institute "that it must send to M. de Lalande and enjoin him not to
print anything, not cast a shadow in his old age over what he has
done in his vigorous days to obtain the esteem of savants." M. de
Chateaubriand, in the draft for his admission address, alluding to the
revolutionary role of his predecessor, Marie Chenier, observed that
he could eulogize him only as the man of letters,[6240] and, in the
reception committee, six out of twelve academicians had accepted the
draft. Thereupon, Fontanes, one of the twelve, prudently abstains from
going to Saint-Cloud. M. de Segur, however, president of the committee,
he goes. In the evening, at the coucher, Napoleon advances to him before
the whole court and, in that terrifying tone of voice which, even today,
vibrates from the dead lines of the silent page,

"Sir," says he to him, "do the literary people really desire to set
France ablaze?... How dare the Academy speak of regicides?... I ought to
put you and M. de Fontanes, as Councillor of State and Grand-Master, in
Vincennes.... You preside over the second division of the Institute.
I order you to inform it that I will not allow politics at its
sessions.... If the class disobeys I will put an end to it as an
objectionable club!"

Thus warned, the members of the Institute remain within the circle
traced out for them and, for many, the circle is sufficiently large. Let
the first division of the Institute, in the mathematical, physical and
natural sciences, Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Carnot, Biot, Monge,
Cassini, Lalande, Burckardt and Arago, Poisson, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
Guyton de Morveau, Vauquelin, Thenard and Hauey, Duhamel, Lamarck,
J