M. Arago's Historical Eloge of Joseph Fourier. 243 



some serious attacks of aneurism of the heart. At Paris it was 

 scarcely possible to mistake the primary cause of the frequent 

 choking sensations which he experienced. However, a fall 

 which he had, on the ^th May 1830, whilst descending a stair, 

 brought the malady to a much more rapid termination than 

 could ever have been expected. Our fellow member, in spite 

 of earnest entreaties, persisted in his determination only to try 

 patience, and a high temperature, as remedies for the most 

 threatening symptoms. On the 16th May, about four p. m., 

 Fourier experienced, in his study, a violent crisis, but without 

 being at all aware of its danger ; for, after throwing himself on 

 a bed, without undressing, he requested M. Petit, a young 

 physician and one of his friends, who was attending him, not 

 to go away, " In order," said he, *« that we may have a little 

 conversation together presently." But almost immediately 

 after these words, he cried out, " Quick, quick — vinegar — I am 

 fainting !" and one of the learned men, who had shed the 

 greatest lustre on the Academy, had ceased to exist. 



This melancholy event is too recent, gentlemen, to render 

 it necessary here to recall, both the profound grief which the 

 Institute experienced on losing one of its brightest ornaments, 

 and the funeral solemnities in which so many persons, generally 

 separated by interests and opinions, united together with a 

 common feeling of veneration and regret, around the inanimate 

 remains of Fourier ; and the Polytechnic School joining the 

 procession, en masse, to do homage to one of its oldest and most 

 celebrated professors ; and the words which, on the brink of 

 the grave, so eloquently described the profound mathematician, 

 the intellectual author, the upright governor, the good citizen, 

 and the devoted friend. We may merely remark, that Fourier 

 belonged to all the great learned societies in the world, and 

 that these, joined with the most affecting unanimity in the 

 grief of the Academy, or rather the grief of all France, — a 

 splendid evidence that the republic of letters is now-a-days 

 something more than a mere name. What is there, then, 

 awanting in respect to the memory of our fellow member ? — a 

 successor better adapted than myself, to group together, and 

 exhibit in relief the different phases of a life so varied, so la- 

 borious, and so gloriously connected with the greatest events of 



