introductory remarks. 173 



This Biography was read at the Public Meeting of 

 THE Academy of Sciences on the 26th of July, 

 1830. 



Gentlemen, — "There are men who may be succeeded, 

 but whom no one can replace." These words of one of 

 the most honoured writers of our time, so often reproduced 

 as the conventional formula on occasions like the present, 

 are to-day in my mouth the faithful expression of what I 

 feel. How could I, indeed, without the deepest emotion, 

 now occupy before this tribunal a place which has been 

 so worthily filled, during eight years, by the illustrious 

 geometer whose unexpected death has been a source of 

 no less regret to friendship, than to science and to letters. 

 It is not here. Gentlemen, for the first time that this 

 sincere avowal of my well-founded diffidence has been 

 heard. Nearly all the members of the Academy have in 

 turn been the confidants of my scruples, and their encour- 

 aging kindness had scarcely succeeded in surmounting 

 them. Devoted for a long time past to purely scientific 

 researches, entirely destitute of the literary claims, Avhich 

 up to this moment had appeared indispensable in the dif- 

 ficult functions which were confided to me, I could only 

 possess in the eyes of the Academy the slight merit of 

 continued zeal, of unlimited devotion to its interests, of 

 an ardent desire manifested on all occasions to see the 

 renown which it had acquired enlarge, if that were pos- 

 sible, and extend itself in all quarters. The void which 

 M. Fourier has left among us (as I was the first to 

 acknowledge, and I acknowledged it without reserve) will 

 be especially felt in these solemn meetings ; it is then 

 that you will recall to mind that language in which the 

 most rigorous precision was so happily allied with ele- 



