130 | MEMOIR OF DELAMBRE. 
at the time, and the violent passions which inflamed all the parties of the realm, 
must have been to a scientific enterprise whose advantages could only be appre- 
ciated by enlightened minds. 
Suspicions accordingly were soon excited by the arrangements which it was 
necessary to make, especially during the night, and by the employment of in- 
comprehensible signals and instruments. The villagers flocked together; they 
questioned the astronomers, and demanded the instructions under which they 
acted, and which seemed to those ignorant minds the cover to some guilty mys- 
tery. Delambre, who always believed that good faith, patience, and the desire 
of being useful, would triumph over all obstacles, showed the instruments, ex- 
plained their use, and, to employ his own expressions, undertook to give lessons 
in geodesic astronomy on the public squares of Lagny, Epinay, and St. Denis. 
By this means he succeeded in convincing some of his auditors. But the re- 
newal of these annoying and perilous interruptions made a suspension of the 
work unavoidable. And although this first obstruction was not of any long 
duration, and Delambre was allowed after a while to prosecute his original 
operations, yet he was called shortly after to endure a persecution still more 
odious and protracted. Under the most frivolous pretexts he was excluded 
from the commission for determining the new system of measures. ‘The record 
of this decision may still be consulted, and we there see that it was the modera- 
tion of his opinions, which was imputed to him as a crime, and which led to his 
being forbidden even to take part in the measurement of the meridian, The 
same order excludes Borda, Delambre, Coulomb, Laplace, and Lavoisier; it 
bears the signatures of Robespierre, Billaud-Varenne, Couthon, and Collot-d’- 
Herbois. How significant this apposition of names, the most illustrious and 
the most odious. But I shall not detain your attention on those unhappy 
times which are already far removed from us; the history of science delights 
only in the recollections of a state of public harmony and concord. 
Delambre might well entertain disquieting apprehensions, and he accordingly 
did all in his power to cause himself to be forgotten. Restored to his seden- 
tary occupations, he divided his time between science and letters. The Muses 
a second time embellished his retreat; they had animated his youth ; they con- 
soled his manhood. The Muses are beneficent and hospitable; they offer an 
asylum to every misfortune; they welcome outraged merit and lift it above the 
injustice of cotemporaries ; they smile upon those who have no patrimony but’ 
their time and fill their solitude with charms; to all conditions of life they 
whisper consoling hopes and inspire noble sentiments. 
After an interruption of two years, Delambre, who had carefully preserved 
all the results of his labors, found it practicable to renew his exclusive attention 
to them. He resumed them at first under a different title, but after no long 
time arrangements for continuing the measurement of the meridian were fully 
restored. With his usual constancy, Delambre prosecuted all the details of the 
vast undertaking, which was completed before the last year of the century. 
The results obtained were calculated according to different methods, several of 
which were proposed by Delambre. A remarkable theorem of Legendre’s was 
also employed in these calculations and evinced its peculiar adaptation to the 
uses of geodesic mensuration, 
When the importance of the subject is considered, the questions of astronomy, 
geometry, and physics, which it was necessary to resolve, the celebrated names 
of French or foreign savants, who lent their co-operation to the inquiry, and 
the weighty and durable consequences of its result, it is not too much to say 
that no other application of science is to be compared with this as regards its 
character of exactness, utility and magnitude. Such was the judgment passed 
upon it by all the academies of Europe, and the opinion of the ‘Institute of 
France was formally expressed when called upon to designate the most import- 
ant application of mathematical or physical science which had occurred within 
