24?^ M. Arago's Historical Eloge of Joseph Fourier. 



have nothing to do with them, he laid his plans so as never to 

 encounter them. How different is this from the ardent and 

 impetuous character of the young orator of the popular society 

 of Auxerre ; but what would be the use of philosophy, if it 

 did not teach us to conquer our passions ! It was only occa- 

 sionally that Fourier's real character shewed itself. " It is 

 strange," said, one day, a certain very influential person belong- 

 ing to the court of Charles X., whom the servant, Joseph^ 

 would not allow to get farther than our fellow member's ante- 

 chamber, " it is really strange that your master should be 

 more difficult of access than a minister I " Fourier overhears 

 the remark, jumps out of bed, to which he was confined by 

 indisposition, opens the room door, and, facing the courtier, 

 exclaims, " Joseph^ tell the gentleman, that if I were minister 

 I should receive every body, because such would be my duty; 

 as a private individual I receive whom I think fit, and when I 

 think fit."' The grandee, disconcerted by the liveliness of the 

 sally, did not answer a word. We must even suppose, that 

 from that instant he determined to visit nobody but ministers, 

 for the simple savant heard no more of him, 



Fourier possessed a constitution which promised him long 

 life; but of what avail are natural powers against the un- 

 healthy customs in which men indulge ! To get quit of slight 

 rheumatic attacks, our fellow member put on even more cloth- 

 ing during the warmest season of the year, than travellers con- 

 demned to pass the winter amid polar ice. " I am reckoned 

 stout,'' he used sometimes to say, with a smile; " but believe 

 me, this opinion is far from the truth. If, like the Egyptian 

 mummies, I were subjected, which God forbid, to the process 

 of unrolling, the only residue would be a very lank body." I 

 might add, taking my term of comparison also from the banks 

 of the Nile, that in Fourier's apartments, which were always 

 small, and strongly heated, even in summer, the currents of air 

 to which one was exposed near the doors, sometimes resembled 

 the terrible simoon, — that burning wind of the desert, which 

 the caravans dread as much as the plague. 



The medical advice of his old and constant friend M. Larrey, 

 did not succeed in inducing him to modify this fatal regimen. 

 Fourier had already had, whilst in Egypt, and at Grenoble, 



