POLITICAL INFLUENCES. 277 
more devoted than myself to the august family of our 
kings, and to the wise institutions which France owes to 
it.” “ All this, sir, is too vague; we shall understand 
one another better by using plain terms. If you werea 
deputy, by the side of which member would you sit?” 
“ Monseigneur,” replied Fresnel, without hesitation, “ by 
the side of Camille Jordan, if I were worthy.” “Many 
thanks for your frankness,” replied the minister. The 
next day an unknown individual was named examiner 
of the marine. 
Fresnel received this repulse without a word of com- 
plaint. In his mind, the personal question was entirely 
effaced in comparison with the pain he felt in seeing, 
after thirty years of debates and troubles, political pas- 
sions still so little subdued. When a minister, whose 
private qualities might claim the homage of good men of 
all parties, considered himself obliged to ask a scientific 
examiner, not for proofs of incorruptibility, of zeal, or of 
knowledge, but for an assurance that, if by chance he 
should ever happen to become a deputy, he would not 
determine to sit at the side of Camille Jordan, a good 
citizen could not but fear that our political future was not 
to be exempt from storms. 
The body of instructors of the Ecole Polytechnique, 
under all régimens, has suffered little from political influ- 
ences. There the examiner and the professor must daily 
discharge their duties in person; there, under the eyes 
of a nursery of skilful hearers, and in some slight degree 
inclined to malice, inaccurate refinements, false calcula- 
tions, bad experiments in chemistry or physics would in 
vain seek refuge under the shelter of the opinions of the 
day. Fresnel might then hope that, notwithstanding his 
recent profession of faith, they would not ‘deprive him of 
