THE MOTIVE POWER OF HEAT. 



I 21 



all this. The Bourbons reestablished upon the throne, General Carnot 

 was proscribed, and Sadi was sent successively to several forts as 

 engineer, to count bricks, to repair walls and to draw up plans destined 

 to lie buried in the official archives. However, he worked conscien- 

 tiously, although his name, which but now had won for him so many 

 official pleasantries, served to retard his due advancement for some 

 time. In 1819, desiring greater leisure for private study, Carnot pre- 

 sented himself as a candidate for a new staff-corps then forming, and 

 received an appointment as lieutenant on the general staff. His duties 

 brought him to Paris and the surrounding country, and he led a studi- 

 ous life, interrupted but once by several happy months spent with his 

 brother and exiled father at Magdeburg. 



He followed original lines in all his work, and was a constant enemy 

 to the traditional and conventional. Upon his table were found only 

 Pascal, Moliere or La Fontaine, and he knew these favorites by heart. 

 With him music was a passion inherited from his mother; not content 

 in attaining a superb execution on the violin, he must needs plunge 

 into the study of theory. His insatiable intelligence led him to follow 

 assiduously courses at the College de France, at the Sorbonne and at 

 the Ecole des Mines. He visited manufacturing plants and familiar- 

 ized himself with the different processes. Mathematical sciences, nat- 

 ural history, industrial arts, political economy, all these were cultivated 

 with ardor. Not only did he indulge in gymnastic exercises, but he 

 investigated the theory of fencing, swimming, dancing and skating. 



Toward the end of 1826 he requested and obtained his return to 

 the corps of engineers, receiving by reason of seniority the rank of 

 captain. However, military service was onerous to him, jealous as he 

 was of his liberty, and in 1828 he resigned in order to devote himself 

 more fully to science. 



His manuscript notes show that he had perceived the relation 

 which is believed to exist between heat and mechanical work; and 

 after having established the principle which now bears his name, he 

 began researches which would have established with surety the prin- 

 ciple of equivalence of mechanical energy and heat had they not been 

 suddenly interrupted by his enthusiastic participation in the revolution 

 of 1830. 



An anecdote which shows his impetuous nature as a man, even as 

 we have seen it exhibited as a child, is also given us by his brother. 

 On the day of the funeral of General Lamarque, Carnot was strolling 

 for curiosity's sake in the neighborhood of the insurrection. A cava- 

 lier who headed a charge and who appeared intoxicated passed down 

 the street at a gallop, flourishing his saber and striking the pedestrians. 

 Carnot rushed forward nimbly avoiding the soldier's sword, seized him 



