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vad ARREST AT MELUN. 223 
replied with the greatest calm; “but on the one hand, 
the two servants who followed me to Nantes, having 
heard that I was going to be imprisoned, quitted me; on 
the other hand, If I am to be arrested, I wish it to be in 
a house that I have occupied some time. I will not be 
described in any act as an individual without a domi- 
cile!” Can it be said, after this, that great men are not 
subject to strange weaknesses ? 
These minute details will be my only answer to some 
culpable expressions that I have met with in a work 
very widely spread: “ M. Laplace,” says the anonymous 
writer “knew all the secrets of geometry; but he had 
not the least notion of the state France was in, he there- 
fore imprudently advised Bailly to go and join him.” 
What is to be here deplored as regards imprudence, is, 
that a writer, without exactly knowing the facts, should 
authoritatively pronounce such severe sentences against 
one of the most illustrious ornaments of our country. 
Bailly did not even enjoy the puerile satisfaction of 
taking rank among the domiciled citizens of Mélun. For 
two days after his arrival in that town, a soldier of the 
revolutionary army having recognized him, brutally 
ordered him to accompany him to the municipality: “I 
am going there,” coolly replied Bailly ; “ you may follow 
me there.” 
The municipal body of Mélun had at that time an 
honest and very courageous man at its head, M. Tarbé 
des Sablons. This virtuous magistrate endeavoured to 
prove to the multitude, (with which the Hotel de Ville 
was immediately filled by the news, rapidly propagated, 
of the arrest of the old Mayor of Paris,) that the pass- 
ports granted at Nantes, countersigned at Rennes, showed 
nothing irregular ; that according to the terms of the law, 
