1885—1888 



197 



and read from it fluently ; he was not five years old. He learnt 

 the elements of geometry very much in the same way. 



Pasteur in his speech thus described Joseph Bertrand's child- 

 hood : " At ten years old you were already celebrated, and it was 

 prophesied that you would pass at the head of the list into the 

 Ecole Polytechnique and become a member of the Academy of 

 Sciences? No one doubted this, not even yourself. You were 

 indeed a child prodigy. Sometimes it amused you to hide in a 

 class of higher mathematics, and when the Professor pro- 

 pounded a difficult problem that no one could solve, one of the 

 students would triumphantly lift you in his arms, stand you on 

 a chair so that you might reach the board, and you would then 

 give the required solution with a calm assurance, in the midst 

 of applause from the professors and pupils." 



Pasteur, whose every progress had been painfully acquired, 

 admired the ease with which Bertrand had passed through the 

 first stages of his career. At an age when marbles and india- 

 rubber balls are usually an important interest, Bertrand walked 

 merrily to the Jardin des Plantes to attend a course of lectures 

 by Gay-Lussac. A few hours later, he might be seen at the 

 Sorbonne, listening with interest to Saint Marc Girardin, the 

 literary moralist. The next day, he would go to a lecture on 

 Comparative Legislation ; never was so young a child seen in 

 such serious places. He borrowed as many books from the 

 Institute library as Biot himself ; he learnt whole passages by 

 heart, merely by glancing at them. He became a doctor ks 

 sciences at sixteen, and a Member of the Institute at thirty-four. 



Besides his personal works — such as those on Analytic 

 Mechanics, which place him in the very first rank — his teach- 

 ing had been brought to bear during forty years on all branches 

 of mathematics. Bertrand's life, apparently so happy, had 

 been saddened by the irreparable loss, during the Commune, 

 of a great many precious notes, letters, and manuscripts, which 

 had been burnt with the house where he had left them. Dis- 

 couraged by this ruin of ten years' work, he had given way to a 

 tendency to writing slight popular articles, of high literary 

 merit, instead of continuing his deeper scientific work. His 

 eulogy of J. B. Dumas was not quite seriously enthusiastic 

 enough to please Pasteur, who had a veritable cult for the 

 memory of his old teacher, and who eagerly grasped this oppor- 

 tunity of speaking again of J. B. Dumas' influence on himself, 

 of his admirable scientific discoveries, and of his political duties, 



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