82 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS ARAGO. 
always flew on before them. After all, his plan made 
them fall off, and soon after brought on their death.” 
Delambre, Legendre, Biot, insisted on the devotion, 
and what they termed the courage, with which I had 
combated arduous difficulties, whether in carrying on the 
observations, or in saving the instruments and the results 
already obtained. They drew an animated picture of the 
dangers I had undergone. M. de Laplace ended by 
yielding when he saw that all the most eminent men of 
the Academy had taken me under their patronage, and 
on the day of the election he gave me his vote. It would 
be, I must own, a subject of regret with me even to this 
day, after a lapse of forty-two years, if I had become 
member of the Institute without having obtained the vote 
of the author of the Mécanique Ceéleste. 
The Members of the Institute were always presented 
to the Emperor after he had confirmed their nominations. 
On the appointed day, in company with the presidents, 
with the secretaries of the four classes, and with the 
academicians who had special publications to offer to the 
Chief of the State, they assembled in one of the saloons 
of the Tuileries. When the Emperor returned from 
mass, he held a kind of review of these savans, these 
artists, these literary men, in green uniform. 
I must own that the spectacle which I witnessed on 
the day of my presentation did not edify me. I even ex- 
perienced real displeasure in seeing the anxiety evinced 
by members of the Institute to be noticed. 
“You are very young,” said Napoleon to me on coming 
near me; and without waiting for a flattering reply, 
which it would not have been difficult to find, he added, 
—“What is your name?” And my neighbour on the 
