A FIRST LIEUTENANT ON SERVICE. 9 
gineers. There, under the auspices of Monge, he doubt- 
less cultivated descriptive geometry and the physical 
sciences with his habitual success; but on this point it 
must be owned, we are reduced to mere conjecture ; for 
in carrying to an extreme the natural desire to conceal 
from strangers the knowledge, then but little spread, 
of the art of making and destroying fortifications, the 
celebrated school of Méziéres had been made a sort of 
conclave of which the secrets were never penetrated by 
the profane. 
CARNOT A FIRST LIEUTENANT ON SERVICE IN FOR- 
TRESSES. 
On the 12th of January, 1773, Carnot, having become 
a first lieutenant, was sent to Calais. The works of a 
place where the periodical oscillations of the ocean add 
a new and important condition to the already very com- 
plicated data of the problem of fortification, were very 
interesting to the young officer. He thus overleaped 
without hindrance, the passage, generally so troublesome, 
from learned theories to tiresome practice; from the 
brilliant illusions which amuse us in schools, to the sad 
realities of life. 
The Mémorial de Saint Héléne says that in his youth 
“Carnot was looked on by his comrades as an original.” 
This title Napoleon had borrowed from Carnot himself. 
I find it in the answer to Bailleul, but explained and 
commented on, and deprived of that vagueness which 
leaves it to be taken either as a compliment or a reproach. 
Carnot, at twenty years of age, was, to the officers of the 
garrison of Calais, an “original,’ or a “philosopher,” 
(these words were equivalent,) because he did not join 
them either in their turbulence or in any of their wild 
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