176 FRESNEL, 



her husband made for the education of their four children. 

 The progress of the eldest son was brilliant and rapid. 

 Augustine, on the contrary advanced extremely slowly in 

 his studies ; at eight years of age he could scarcely read. 

 This want of success might be attributable to the very 

 delicate condition of the young scholar, and to the pre- 

 cautions which it rendered necessary; but it will be still 

 better understood when it is known that Fresnel never 

 had any taste for the study of languages ; that he always 

 set very little value on the exercises which address them- 

 selves solely to the memory ; that his own, which was 

 moreover very rebellious generally, refused almost ab- 

 solutely to retain words from the moment that they 

 were detached from a clear argument and displaced in 

 arrangement: I must also own, witliout hesitation, that 

 those whose predictions concerning the future of a child 

 are founded on the precise estimate of the first places 

 which he obtained at the college, in theme or in transla- 

 tion, would never have imagined that Augustine Fresnel 

 would become one of the most distinguished savants of 

 our epoch. As to his young comrades, they had, on the 

 contrary, judged with that sagacity which rarely deceives 

 them ; they called him " the genius." This pompous title 

 was unanimously accorded him on account of the experi- 

 mental researches (I may be allowed this expression, it is 

 but just) to which he devoted himself at the age of nine 

 years, whether for determining the relative length and 

 bore which give the greatest power to the little elder- 

 wood popguns which children use in their play, or in de- 

 termining which are the wood-, dry or green, which are 

 best to use in making bows, under the double considera- 

 tion of elasticity and strength. The physicist of nine 

 years old had, indeed, executed this little work with so 



