EULOGY ON AMPERE. 171 



foremost in the class springs forward and seizes the old man's hand, 

 another wrests the tumbler from his grasp. A scene ! Profound silence 

 in the class ! The venerable man looks at them ironically. " Thank 

 you, gentlemen ! Very kind of you ! But you are giving yourselves un- 

 necessary trouble ! I took it for grauted that my class understood the 

 laws of gravitation. With your permission, gentlemen, I will first drink 

 my eau sucree, Avhich I want, and will then give you a hint, which you 

 appear to want." He now drank without further molestation, and then 

 drawing in a long breath — ^^Uh! comment, Messieurs, voulez vous quHl 

 est en du danger ! Ne savez-vous dona pas que le verre est plus pesant que 

 Veauf^ "What, gentlemen! then you thought there was some danger! 

 But ain't you aware that glass is heavier than w^ater ! And did you not 

 observe how careful I was to drink the contents of the tumbler at a rea- 

 sonable angle?" Then, taking up the tumbler, he continued to incline 

 it over the table till it was nearly horizontal, and so on, till the pieces of 

 glass fell out, and the class laughed. " Ah! sije Vuvais bu a cette angle- 

 la I — mais fai eteplus adroit ! " "Ah ! if I had drunk at this inclination ! — 

 but I was too knowing for that." Here (for it was at the end of his lec- 

 ture that this little episode occurred) a bright-eyed damsel went up and 

 asked some question respecting the course of rays of light through cer- 

 tain media, but whether old Ampere referred her to his heart, as we 

 should have done, we could not hear. She colored, however ; her eyes 

 seemed x)leased with the interpretation given to her question, whatever it 

 might have been, and they walked out together — a "January and May" — 

 separated only by the insecure partition of the i^asteboard almanac which 

 the elder of the months still kept in his hand. 



