ESCAPE FROM THE LUXEMBOURG. 71 
~ Carnot escaped from the Luxembourg at the moment 
that the myrmidons were entering his room, to arrest 
him. A family of Burgundian artisans received and 
concealed him. ‘Those whose life is an uninterrupted 
series of privations, know well how to compassionate 
misfortune. Our colleague afterwards sought refuge in 
the house of M. Oudot, a great partisan of the coup-d état 
on the 18th Fructidor; and where, from that date, no 
one would have thought of seeking the proscribed Direc- 
tor. Carnot had not yet left Paris, when his name was 
erased from the list of the members of that national 
Institute, to the creation of which he had so much con- 
tributed. 
Some laws proclaimed on the 19th and 20th of Fruc- 
tidor, year V., declared all the places vacant that had 
been held by the citizens struck by the coup-d état of the 
18th. The Minister of the Interior, Letourneux, there- 
fore wrote to the Institute enjoining it to proceed to the 
naming of a successor to Carnot. The three classes 
then proceeded to the nomination of the members of 
each class. One hundred and four voters took part in 
the election; but the urn did not receive one white ball ! 
I know, Gentlemen, how much, in Revolutionary 
times, the most upright, the most firm minds, are influ- 
enced by public opinion; I know that after the lapse of 
time that separates us from the 18th of Fructidor, no 
one can conceive that he has a right to blame the Insti- 
tute at all for having yielded to the ministerial orders ; 
still, I will here express freely my regret, that imperious 
circumstances did not permit our honourable predeces- 
sors, since the Fructidorian era, to draw a marked line 
of distinction between the politician and the philosopher. 
Under the ‘Regency, in the affair of the Abbé Saint- 
