104 CARNOT. 



PORTRAIT OF CARNOT. ANECDOTES RELATIVE TO HIS 



POLITICAL AND PRIVATE LIFE. 



If iconography is not now considered by anybody as a 

 futile science, if some very distinguished minds have 

 made it the object of their earnest study, it may be per 

 mitted me here to say, that Carnot was of tall stature, of 

 manly and regular features, a wide and calm forehead, 

 lively and penetrating blue eyes, a polite demeanour, 

 but circumspect and cold ; that at the age of sixty, there 

 was still perceptible in him, even in a civilian s costume, 

 something of the military air to which he had been 

 accustomed in his youth. 



I have considered him in all his phases, as a mem 

 ber of the Conventional Government, of the Committee 

 of Public Safety, of the Executive Directory, the Min 

 ister of War, a Military Engineer, the Exile, the Acade 

 mician. Still, many essential traits would be wanting to 

 the portrait, however comprehensive it be already, if I 

 did not also speak of the private man. I shall not 

 swerve, in this latter portion of my picture, from the 

 style that I adopted in the beginning ; I shall advance 

 always proof in hand. It is thus I think that a geometer 

 should be praised ; I mistake, it is thus that everybody 

 should be praised ; seeing how rare honour, disinterest 

 edness, and true patriotism are among the living ; and 

 how common, on the contrary, among the dead, accord 

 ing to their funeral eulogies and their epitaphs ; the 

 public has come to the wise conclusion of no longer 

 believing either the one or the other. 



I have read somewhere that Carnot was an ambitious 

 man. I will not stop to combat this opinion in form, 

 but I will relate, and you yourselves shall judge. 



