e 
eo 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 éloge 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.” 
