94 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



him utter the last words, though they were lost in the uproar. But 

 Galois could not stand this lying and retracted it at the public 

 trial. His attitude before the tribunal was ironical and provoking, 

 yet the jury rendered a verdict of not proven and he was ac- 

 quitted. He did not remain free very long. On the following Four- 

 teenth of July, the government, fearing manifestations, decided to 

 have him arrested as a preventive measure. He was given six 

 months' imprisonment on the technical charge of carrying arms 

 and wearing a military uniform, but he remained in Ste. Pelagie 

 only until March 19 (or 16?), 1832, when he was sent to a con- 

 valescent home in the rue de Lourcine. A dreadful epidemic of 

 cholera was then raging in Paris, and Galois' transfer had been de- 

 termined by the poor state of his health. However, this proved to 

 be his undoing. 



He was now a prisoner on parole and took advantage of it to 

 carry on an intrigue with a woman of whom we know nothing, 

 but who was probably not very reputable ( ff une coquette de bas 

 etage," says Raspail). Think of it! This was, as far as we know, 

 his first love — and it was but one more tragedy on top of so many 

 others. The poor boy who had declared in prison that he could 

 love only a Cornelia or a Tarpeia * (we hear in this an echo of 

 his mother's Roman ideal) , gave himself to this new passion with 

 his usual frenzy, only to find more bitterness at the end of it. His 

 revulsion is lamentably expressed in a letter to Chevalier (May 

 25, 1832): 



. . . How to console oneself for having exhausted in one month 

 the greatest source of happiness which is in man — of having ex- 

 hausted it without happiness, without hope, being certain that one 

 has drained it for life? 



Oh! come and preach peace after that! Come and ask men who 

 suffer to take pity upon what is! Pity, never! Hatred, that is all. He 

 who does not feel it deeply, this hatred of the present, cannot really 

 have in him the love of the future. . . . 



* He must have quoted Tarpeia by mistake. 



