weeks the aspect of two hostile camps. There was at last a strongly
disputed electoral battle; the result was the nomination of Condorcet.

I should regret if we had to judge of the sentiments of Bailly, after
this defeat, by those of his adherents. Their anger found vent in terms
of unpardonable asperity. They said that D'Alembert had "basely betrayed
friendship, honour, and the first principles of probity."

They here alluded to a promise of protection, support, coöperation,
dating ten years back. But was his promise absolute? Engaging himself
personally to Bailly for a situation that might not become vacant for
ten or fifteen years, had D'Alembert, contrary to his duty as an
academician, declared beforehand, that any other candidate, whatever
might be his talents, would be to him as not existing?

This is what ought to have been ascertained, before giving themselves up
to such violent and odious imputations.

Was it not quite natural that the geometer D'Alembert, having to
pronounce his opinion between two honourable learned men, gave the
preference to the candidate who seemed to him most imbued with the
higher mathematics? The éloges of Condorcet were, besides, by their
style, much more in harmony with those that the Academy had approved
during three quarters of a century. Before the declaration of the
vacancy on the 27th of February, 1773, D'Alembert said to Voltaire,
relative to the recueil by Condorcet, "Some one asked me the other day
what I thought of that work. I answered by writing on the frontispiece,
'Justice, propriety, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance,
and nobleness.'" And Voltaire wrote, on the 1st of March, "I have read,
while dying, the little book by M. de Condorcet; it is as good in its