158 EULOGY ON AMPERE. 



Like Lafoutaine, between whom there was more than one point of 

 resemblance, Ampere would remain sometimes unconscious of all 

 arouutl him in the midst of a crowd ; and from this proceeded certain 

 eccentricities, certain aberrations of language, of carriage, and dress, 

 difficult to be understood by those who have never known what it is to 

 be swayed by the tyrannical domination of an idea or of a sentiment. 

 Abstraction ofiends, where it does not excite laughter. Ampere's obliv- 

 iousness was of the latter kind, and yet it must have offended some, 

 since it has been fancied, and even seriously maiutained, that the many 

 instances of which we have all been witnesses were the result of affec- 

 tation. This serious charge has been too widely spread to allow me to 

 give a kind of assent by silence. I will refer, then, boldly to the con- 

 temptible circumstances which gave rise to it. 



Tell us, for example, what advantage could Ampere expect the day 

 when, seated at the table of persons whom all his interest required him 

 to treat with deference, he exclaimed in a fretful tone, fancying himself 

 at hoaie, " What a vile dinner; will my sister ever understand that, 

 before engaging cooks, it is necessary to inquire into their skill f ' 



I am almost ashamed to have to stoop to such a justification ; for, 

 after all, Ampere is not the only distinguished man subject to absence 

 of mind. Would you like to generalize the charge ? I can at once cite 

 the instance of the celebrated astronomer, who, on being asked b^'' his 

 house-keeper the exact number of minutes required to boil an egg, 

 found with despair that his watch, of great value, and on which depended 

 the accuracy of all his labors, had been in the boiling water for a Avhole 

 minute, while the egg was in his hand. I can mention, too, the case of 

 the pious Father Beccaria, who, his mind filled with an electrical experi- 

 ment even while celebrating mass, shouted in his loudest tones, '■'■L-eHpe- 

 riensa e fatta,'''' when he should have chanted the Domiuus Vobiscum; an 

 obliviousness, by the way, which, being reported to the ecclesiastical 

 authorities, resulted in the suspension of the illustrious physicist. 



To transform an absent-minded man, by the system just alluded to, into 

 a sort ot mixture of the impostor and the hypocrite, would be to force 

 us to destroy some of the clever pages of La Bruyere, and to condemn 

 to the flames an agreeable comedy of Eegnard. There is still another 

 consequence, which creates yet more disgust : the inimitable fabler 

 would no longer be the loortlii) man, as Moliere baptized him. While 

 admiring his immortal works, we should be forced to deprive him of 

 that halo of respect and esteem — in fact, almost tender attachment — 

 with which so many successive generations have surrounded him. The 

 cause is lost, gentlemen, when it leads to consequences so violently irri- 

 tating to public feeling. 



Ampere's credulity had become in a measure proverbial. It induced 

 him to believe one after another the most extraordinary facts in the 

 political world and the most chimerical events in the intellectual. Still 

 this avowal can create no prejudice against the wide reputation of the 



