JOSEPH FOURIER. 175 



thoughts iu society, wherein he maintained an ahnost ahsohite silence. 

 '■' I observe," he replied, " the vanity of mankind, to wound it as occa- 

 sion offers." If, like his predecessor, Fourier also studied the baser pas- 

 sions which contend for honors, riches, and power, it was not in order 

 to engage in hostilities with them ; resolved never to compromise matters 

 with them, he yet so calculated his movements beforehand as not to 

 find himself in their way. We perceive a wide difference between this 

 disposition and the ardent, impetuous character of the young orator of the 

 popular society of Auxerre. But what purpose would philosophy serve, 

 if it did not teach us to conquer our passions ? It is not that occasion- 

 ally the natural disposition of Fourier did not display itself in full relief. 

 "It is strange," said one day a certain very influential r>ersonage of the 

 court of Charles X, whom Fourier's servant would not allow to pass 

 beyond the antechamber of our colleague, " it is truly strange that 

 your master should be more difficult of access than a minister!" Fou- 

 rier heard the conversation, leaped out of his bed to which he was con- 

 fined by indisposition, opened the door of the chamber, and exclaimed, 

 face to face with the courtier, " Joseph, tell Monsieur, that if I was 

 minister, I should receive everybody, because it would be my duty to do 

 so ; but being a private individual, I receive whomsoever I please, and 

 at what hour soever I please I" ]>isconcerted by the liveliness of the 

 retort, the great seignior did not utter one word in reply. AVe must 

 even believe that from that moment he resolved not to visit any but 

 ministers, for the plain man of science heard nothing more of him. 



Fourier was endowed with a constitution which held forth a promise 

 of long life ; but what can natural advantages avail against the anti- 

 hygienic habits which men arbitrarily acquire? In order to guard 

 against slight attacks of rheumatism, our colleague was in the habit of 

 clothing himself, even in the hottest season of the year, after a fashion 

 which is not practiced even by travelers condemned to spend the winter 

 amid the snows of the polar regions. " One would suppose me to be 

 corpulent," he used to say occasionally with a smilo; '' be assured, how- 

 ever, that there is much to deduct from this opinion. If, after the 

 example of the Egyptian nuimmies, I was subjected to the operation of 

 disembowelment, — from which heaven preserve me, — the residue w^ould 

 be found to be a very slender body." I might add, sele(;ting also my 

 comparison from the banks of the Nile, that in the apartments of Fou- 

 rier, which were always of small extent and intensely heated, even in 

 summer, the currents of air to which one was exposed resembled some- 

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

 caravans dread as much as the plague. 



The prescriptions of medicine which, in the mouth of M. Larrey, were 

 blended with the anxieties of a long and constant friendslii[), failed to 

 induce a modificaticm of this mortal regime. Fourier had already expe- 

 rienced, in Egyi)t and Grenoble, some attacks of aneurism of the heart. 

 At Paris it was impossible to be mistaken with respect to the primary 



