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. 



