196 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS ARAGO. 



After liaviug: fulfilled the duties of secretary with much distinction, 

 but not without some feebleness and negligence in consequence of his 

 bad health, Fourier died the 16th of May, 1830. I declined several times 

 the honor which the Academy appeared willing to do me, in naming me 

 to succeed him. I believed, without false modesty, that I had not the 

 qualities necessary to fill this important place suitably. When thirty- 

 nine out of forty-four voters had appointed me, it was quite time that 1 

 should give in to an opinion so flattering and so i)lainly expressed. On 

 the 7th of June, 1830, I, therefore, became perpetual secretary of the 

 Academy for the Mathematical Sciences ; but, conformably to the plea 

 of an accumulation of offices, which I had used as an argument to sup- 

 port, in November, 1822, the election of M. Fourier, I declared that I 

 should give in my resignation of the professorship in the Polytechnic 

 School. ]S"either the solicitations of Marshal Soult, the minister of war, 

 nor those of the most eminent members of the Academy, could avail in 

 persuading me to renounce this resolution. 



