BIRTH AND EDUCATION. 175 



the Princess of Cleves if they wished closely to follow the 

 plot, and to know the whole beauty of it." I am aware 

 that I should not be right in demanding so little ; but, on 

 the other hand, I have the advantage of speaking before 

 an assembly familiarized with deep study, and from 

 which one may confidently claim a degree of attention 

 which Fontenelle himself, at the commencement of the 

 eighteenth century, would have found it difficult to gain 

 from the frivolous assembly he was addressing. 



INFANCY OF FRESNEL. HIS ENTRANCE INTO THE POLY- 

 TECHNIC SCHOOL AND INTO THE CORPS OF BRIDGES 



AND HIGHWAYS. HIS DEPOSITION FOR HAVING GONE 



TO JOIN THE ROYAL AR3IY AT PALUD. 



Augustine John Fresnel was born the 10th of May, 

 1788, at Broglie, near Bernay, in that part of the ancient 

 province of Kormandy which now forms the department 

 of Eure. His father was an architect, and in this quality 

 had been entrusted by the military engineer with the 

 construction of the Fort of Querqueville, at one of the 

 extremities of the harbour of Cherbourg ; but the revo- 

 lutionary storm having forced him to abandon this work, 

 he retired with all his family to a moderate property 

 which he owned near Caen, at Matthieu, a little village 

 which already was not without some notoriety, being the 

 birthplace of the poet John Marot, father of the cele- 

 brated Clement. Madame Fresnel, whose family name 

 (Merimee) was also to become one day dear to literature 

 and the arts, was endowed with the most happy qualities 

 of heart and mind ; the solid and varied instruction which 

 she had received in her youth enabled her to assist ac- 

 tively, during eight consecutive years, in the efforts which 



