16 i =AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS ARAGO. 
more openly, or under a more bitter form. “ Ah!” said. 
I to myself, “ how true was the inspiration of the ancients 
when they attributed weaknesses to him who nevertheless 
made Olympus tremble by a frown!” 
Here I should mention, in order of time, a circum- 
stance which might have produced the most fatal conse- 
quences for me. The fact was this: — 
I have described above, the scene which caused the ex- 
pulsion of Brissot’s son from the Polytechnic School. I 
had entirely lost sight of him for several months, when 
he came to pay me a visit at the Observatory, and placed 
me in the most delicate, the most terrible, position that 
an honest man ever found himself in. 
» “JT have not seen you,” he said to me, “ because since 
leaving the school I have practised daily firing with a 
pistol; I have now acquired a skill beyond the common, 
and Iam about to employ it in ridding France of the 
tyrant who has confiscated all her liberties. My meas- 
ures are taken: I have hired a small room on the Car- 
rousel, close to the place by which Napoleon, on coming 
out from the court, will pass to review the cavalry ; from 
the humble window.of my apartment will the ball be 
fired which will go through his head.” 
I leave it to be imagined with what despair I received 
this confidence. J made every imaginable effort to deter 
Brissot from his sinister project; I remarked how all 
those who had rushed on enterprises of this nature had 
been branded in history by the odious title of assassin. 
Nothing succeeded in shaking his fatal resolution; I only 
obtained from him a promise on his honour that the exe- 
cution of it should be postponed for a time, and I put 
myself in quest of means for rendering it abortive. 
The idea of announcing Brissot’s project to the author- 
