INTRODUCTION.

Gentlemen,--The learned man, illustrious in so many ways, whose life I
am going to relate, was taken from France half a century ago. I hasten
to make this remark, so as thoroughly to show that I have selected this
subject without being deterred by complaints which I look upon as unjust
and inapplicable. The glory of the members of the early Academy of
Sciences is an inheritance for the present Academy. We must cherish it
as we would the glory of later days; we must hallow it with the same
respect, we must devote to it the same worship: the word _prescription_
would here be synonymous with ingratitude.

If it had happened, Gentlemen, that amongst the academicians who
preceded us, a man, already illustrious by his labours, and, without
personal ambition, yet thrown, despite himself, into the midst of a
terrible revolution, exposed to a thousand unrestrained passions, had
cruelly disappeared in the political effervescence--oh! then, any
negligence, any delay in studying the facts would be inexcusable; the
honourable contemporaries of the victim would soon be no longer there to
shed the light of their honest and impartial memory on obscure events;
an existence devoted to the cultivation of reason and of truth would
come to be appreciated only from documents, on which, for my part, I
would not blindly draw, until it shall be proved that, in revolutionary
times, we can trust to the uprightness of parties.

I felt in duty bound, Gentlemen, to give you a sketch of the ideas that
have led me to present to you a detailed account of the life and labours