380 JOSEPH FOURIER. 



Auxerre, and bestowing upon him numerous tokens of a 

 lively and sincere affection. I venture to assert that no 

 event in the life of our colleague affords a more striking 

 proof of the goodness of his natural disposition and the 

 amiability of his manners. It would be necessary not 

 to know the human heart to suppose that the monks of 

 St. Benoit did not feel some chagrin upon finding them- 

 selves so abruptly abandoned, to imagine especially that 

 they should give up without lively regret the glory 

 which the order might have expected from the ingenious 

 colleague who had just escaped from them. 



Fourier responded worthily to the confidence of which 

 he had just become the object. When his colleagues 

 were indisposed, the titular professor of mathematics 

 occupied in turns the chairs of rhetoric, of history, and 

 of philosophy ; and whatever might be the subject of his 

 lectures, he diffused among an audience which listened 

 to him with delight, the treasures of a varied and pro- 

 found erudition, adorned with all the brilliancy which 

 the most elegant diction could impart to them. 



MEMOIR ON THE RESOLUTION OF NUMERICAL EQUA- 

 TIONS. 



About the close of the year 1789 Fourier repaired to 

 Paris and read before the Academy of Sciences a memoir 

 on the resolution of numerical equations of all degrees. 

 This work of his early youth our colleague, so to speak, 

 never lost sight of. He explained it at Paris to the 

 pupils of the Polytechnic School ; he developed it upon 

 the banks of the Nile in presence of the Institute of 

 Egypt; at Grenoble, from the year 1802, it was his 

 favourite subject of conversation with the Professors of 

 the Central School and of the Faculty of Sciences ; this 



