to admire all, to respect all, that was connected with him who had
discovered the cause of the secular equation of the moon, had found in
the movement of this planet the means of calculating the ellipticity of
the earth, had traced to the laws of attraction the long inequalities of
Jupiter and of Saturn, &c. &c. But what was my disenchantment, when one
day I heard Madame de Laplace, approaching her husband, say to him,
"Will you entrust to me the key of the sugar?"

Some days afterwards, a second incident affected me still more vividly.
M. de Laplace's son was preparing for the examinations of the
Polytechnic School. He came sometimes to see me at the Observatory. In
one of his visits I explained to him the method of continued fractions,
by help of which Lagrange obtains the roots of numerical equations. The
young man spoke of it to his father with admiration. I shall never
forget the rage which followed the words of Emile de Laplace, and the
severity of the reproaches which were addressed to me, for having
patronized a mode of proceeding which may be very long in theory, but
which evidently can in no way be found fault with on the score of its
elegance and precision. Never had a jealous prejudice shown itself more
openly, or under a more bitter form. "Ah!" said I to myself, "how true
was the inspiration of the ancients when they attributed weaknesses to
him who nevertheless made Olympus tremble by a frown!"

Here I should mention, in order of time, a circumstance which might have
produced the most fatal consequences for me. The fact was this:--

I have described above, the scene which caused the expulsion of
Brissot's son from the Polytechnic School. I had entirely lost sight of
him for several months, when he came to pay me a visit at the
Observatory, and placed me in the most delicate, the most terrible,