Ft a ee ee ee ee 
ASSOCIATED WITH LACAILLE IN HIS LABOURS. 97 
first comedies of Moliére, The three rival Doctors and 
The Schoolmaster, are no longer known but by their 
titles. Let us recall to mind that reflection of Voltaire’s: 
“Tt is very difficult to succeed before the age of thirty in 
a branch of literature that requires a knowledge of the 
world and of the human heart.” 
A happy chance showed that the sciences might open 
an honourable and glorious path to the discouraged poet. 
M. de Moncaville offered to teach him mathematics, in 
exchange for drawing-lessons that his son received from 
the warder of the king’s pictures. The proposal being 
accepted, the progress of Sylvain Bailly in these studies 
was rapid and brilliant. 
BAILLY BECOMES THE PUPIL OF LACAILLE.—HE IS 
ASSOCIATED WITH HIM IN HIS ASTRONOMICAL 
LABOURS. 
The mathematical student soon after had one of those 
providential meetings which decide a young man’s future 
fate. Mademoiselle Lejeuneux cultivated painting. It 
was at the house of this female artist, known afterwards 
as Madame La Chenaye, that Lacaille saw Bailly. The 
attentive, serious, and modest demeanour of the student 
charmed the great astronomer. He showed it in a most 
unequivocal manner, by offering, though so avaricious of 
his time, to become the guide of the future observer, and 
also to put him in communication with Clairaut. 
It is said that from his first intercourse with Lacaille, 
Bailly showed a decided vocation for astronomy. This 
fact appears to me incontestable. At his first appear- 
ance in this line, I find him associated in the most labori- 
ous, difficult, and tiresome investigations of that great 
observer. 
