BIRTH AND EDUCATION. 175 
the Princess of Cléves if they wished closely to follow the 
plot, and to know the whole beauty of it.” I am aware 
that I should not be right in demanding so little ; but, on 
the other hand, I have the advantage of speaking before 
an assembly familiarized with deep study, and from 
which one may confidently claim a degree of attention 
which Fontenelle himself, at the commencement of the 
eighteenth century, would have found it difficult to gain 
from the frivolous assembly he was addressing. 
INFANCY OF FRESNEL.—-HIS ENTRANCE INTO THE POLY- 
TECHNIC SCHOOL AND INTO THE CORPS OF BRIDGES 
AND HIGHWAYS.—HIS DEPOSITION FOR HAVING GONE 
TO JOIN THE ROYAL ARMY AT PALUD. 
Augustine John Fresnel was born the 10th of May, 
1788, at Broglie, near Bernay, in that part of the ancient 
province of Normandy which now forms the department 
of Eure. His father was an architect, and in this quality 
had been entrusted by the military engineer with the 
construction of the Fort of Querqueville, at one of the 
extremities of the harbour of Cherbourg; but the revo- 
lutionary storm having forced him to abandon this work, 
he retired with all his family to a moderate property 
which he owned near Caen, at Matthieu, a little village 
which already was not without some notoriety, being the 
birthplace of the poet John Marot, father of the cele- 
brated Clement. Madame Fresnel, whose family name 
(Mérimée) was also to become one day dear to literature 
and the arts, was endowed with the most happy qualities 
of heart and mind; the solid and varied instruction which 
she had received in her youth enabled her to assist ac- 
tively, during eight consecutive years, in the efforts which 
