MERITS OF MONTALEMBERT. 19 
cult circumstances, Carnot already showed himself such 
as he always was afterwards—frank, just, and completely 
insensible to undeserved abuse. = 
“If your suspicions were well founded,” wrote he to 
his fiery antagonist, “I should have forgotten the first 
duties of propriety and decency; I should have been 
wanting, above all, in the infinite respect which military 
men owe to a distinguished general: be assured that 
there is not a single officer of engineers who has not 
learnt with the same pleasure, from M. le Marquis de 
Montalembert, how to fortify places well, as from the 
brave D’Essé to defend them well.” . 
The appositeness and delicacy of this quotation will be 
appreciated when I mention that the brave D’Essé, who, 
in 1543, after three months of an heroic resistance, com- 
pelled the whole forces of the emperor to raise the siege 
of Landrecies, was an ancestor of M. de Montalembert. 
Moderation and politeness are almost infallible means 
of success against violence and affront ; moreover, in the 
quarrels of the press, they must often be looked upon as 
the simple result of calculation, and as proofs of ability. 
But Carnot’s letter allowed no misapprehension as to the 
sincerity of his sentiments. “ Your work,’ he wrote to 
him who had just criticized so bitterly the principle, the 
style, and I might almost add, the punctuation, of his 
éloge, “ your work 7s full of genius... . . Now that 
your casemates are known and proved, fortification will 
put on anew face ; it will become a new art. It will be 
no longer allowable to employ the revenues of the State 
to construct something tolerable, when you have taught 
us to construct something good..... Although the 
corps of engineers has not the advantage of possessing 
you, we do not the less consider that we have a right to 
