176 FRESNEL. 
her husband made for the education of their four children. 
The progress of the eldest son was brilliant and rapid. 
Augustine, on the contrary advanced extremely slowly in 
his studies ; at eight years of age he could scarcely read. 
This want of success might be attributable to the very 
delicate condition of the young scholar, and to the pre- 
cautions which it rendered necessary ; but it will be still 
better understood when it is known that Fresnel never 
had any taste for the study of languages ; that he always 
set very little value on the exercises which address them- 
selves solely to the memory; that his own, which was 
moreover very rebellious generally, refused almost ab- 
solutely to retain words from the moment that they 
were detached from a clear argument and displaced in 
arrangement: I must also own, without hesitation, that 
those whose predictions concerning the future of a child 
are founded on the precise estimate of the first places 
which he obtained at the college, in theme or in transla- 
tion, would never have imagined that Augustine Fresnel 
would become one of the most distinguished savants of 
our epoch. As to his young comrades, they had, on the 
contrary, judged with that sagacity which rarely deceives 
them ; they called him “the genius.” This pompous title 
was unanimously accorded him on account of the experi- 
mental researches (I may be allowed this expression, it is 
but just) to which he devoted himself at the age of nine 
years, whether for determining the relative length and 
bore which give the greatest power to the little elder- 
wood popguns which children use in their play, or in de- 
termining which are the woods, dry or green, which are 
best to use in making bows, under the double considera- 
tion of elasticity and strength. The physicist of nine 
years old had, indeed, executed this little work with so 
