20 CARNOT. 



reckon you amongst its most illustrious members. Who- 

 ever extends our knowledge, whoever furnishes us with 

 new means of being useful to France, becomes our com- 

 rade, our chief, and our benefactor." M. de Montalem- 

 bert did not resist such explicit and flattering testimony. 

 The most formal disavowal of the unlucky pamphlet 

 quickly followed Carnot's answer ; on the other hand, it 

 must be confessed that the higher authorities of the en- 

 gineers were so irritated at the praises which a simple 

 captain had allowed himself to bestow on systems which 

 they had authoritatively rejected, that a " lettre de 

 cachet " and the Bastille signified to our member that, 

 on the eve of our great revolution, liberty of discussion, 

 that precious conquest of modern philosophy, had not 

 yet penetrated amongst military usages. Such rigour 

 seems inexplicable, even when one makes every allow- 

 ance for the requirements of esprit de corps and the sus- 

 ceptibilities of self-esteem ; Carnot had shown himself, 

 indeed, both in his eloge and in his letter to Montalem- 

 bert, the warmest defender of the department to which 

 he belonged, and which, said he, " professes to sacrifice 

 its time and its life for the State." Had this man then, 

 I demand, forgotten the duties of his position, who, when 

 called on to judge between the services of a regimental 

 officer and those of the engineer on whom devolves the 

 dangerous honour of tracing parallels, of commanding in 

 the trench, or of directing the head of a sap, expressed 

 himself so nobly : " The officer of engineers is in the 

 midst of peril, but he is there alone and silent ; he sees 

 death, but he must gaze on it with coolness ; he may not 

 rush on it like the heroes of battle ; he sees it approach 

 with tranquillity ; he seeks the spot where the lightning 

 bursts forth, not to act but to observe ; not to get excited, 

 but to deliberate." 



